Out in the shack
Out in the shack
RadioShack has dug itself into serious financial straits through the years by failing to stay with the times. When I was a kid, “Radio Shack” was a cool little store with lots of strange gadgets for electronics hobbyists and do-it-yourself home repair types. Any business that intentionally calls itself a “shack” is clearly trying to evoke an image, and the Radio Shack image was a preserve for the home inventor, laboring in a backyard shop, contentedly stringing wires and soldering connections amid piles of loose parts and circuit diagrams.
Dear Linux Pro Reader,
RadioShack has dug itself into serious financial straits through the years by failing to stay with the times. When I was a kid, "Radio Shack" was a cool little store with lots of strange gadgets for electronics hobbyists and do-it-yourself home repair types. Any business that intentionally calls itself a "shack" is clearly trying to evoke an image, and the Radio Shack image was a preserve for the home inventor, laboring in a backyard shop, contentedly stringing wires and soldering connections amid piles of loose parts and circuit diagrams.
The world has changed a lot since then. Frankly, there aren't as many things to fix. TVs and stereos no longer have serviceable parts. Few of us climb onto a roof to run cable to a TV antenna. Even network cable isn't as ubiquitous as it was a few years ago with so many homes going wireless. RadioShack has drifted into selling a lot of consumer electronic products, including TV and even mobile phones, to go along with the quirky gadgets and the usual supply of cables, connectors, and switches, but the whole thing has lost its direction.
[...]
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