I worked at RadioShack one summer about 5 years ago during college, and it is frankly not surprising to me that the business is failing.
RadioShack was never able to offer competitive pricing on anything besides cell phones while I worked there, and would frequently employ somewhat dubious business tactics when it came to pricing (permanent "sales" on many things like batteries, "sales" where the sale price was the same as the normal retail price which was only disclosed in small type on the bottom of the pricing label).
RadioShack had an employee compensation system which STRONGLY incentivized cell phone sales resulting in the infamous aggressive phone pushing. At RadioShack you were (and maybe still are?) paid minimum wage plus you received a percentage of the gross store revenue each day if it exceeded the daily sales target (a few thousand iirc), a fixed amount for each extended warranty sold ($1-2 iirc), and an amount for each phone sold (something like $20-50). At our store we never had the customer volume to hit our sales targets, and so the only way we could make money was to sell phones.
The employee turnover at my store was insanely high, and none of the employees knew anything about electronics (including myself at the time), computers, or AV equipment. This was generally OK though, as most of our customers were also not tech savvy and couldn't tell the difference. Customers overwhelmingly came in to buy AV cabling, batteries, digital TV antennas, and analog to digital set top boxes. We never sold a TV or any other high value item while I was there.
Perhaps RadioShack will be able to pivot, but if not, I don't think the world will be that worse off.
As an aside, I felt bad pushing phones and worse charging ignorant people $30 for an HDMI cable that could be had from eforcity for under a dollar, and would therefore frequently steer customers away towards Amazon for such items. This practice somewhat perversely earned me regular customers, and by the end of the summer I was running what amounted to an off the books IT support desk out of the store where people would bring in their laptops and phones and I would troubleshoot their problems for 50-100 bucks. Thanks for providing me with retail space for my small business RadioShack!
RadioShack was never able to offer competitive pricing on anything besides cell phones while I worked there, and would frequently employ somewhat dubious business tactics when it came to pricing (permanent "sales" on many things like batteries, "sales" where the sale price was the same as the normal retail price which was only disclosed in small type on the bottom of the pricing label).
RadioShack had an employee compensation system which STRONGLY incentivized cell phone sales resulting in the infamous aggressive phone pushing. At RadioShack you were (and maybe still are?) paid minimum wage plus you received a percentage of the gross store revenue each day if it exceeded the daily sales target (a few thousand iirc), a fixed amount for each extended warranty sold ($1-2 iirc), and an amount for each phone sold (something like $20-50). At our store we never had the customer volume to hit our sales targets, and so the only way we could make money was to sell phones.
The employee turnover at my store was insanely high, and none of the employees knew anything about electronics (including myself at the time), computers, or AV equipment. This was generally OK though, as most of our customers were also not tech savvy and couldn't tell the difference. Customers overwhelmingly came in to buy AV cabling, batteries, digital TV antennas, and analog to digital set top boxes. We never sold a TV or any other high value item while I was there.
Perhaps RadioShack will be able to pivot, but if not, I don't think the world will be that worse off.
As an aside, I felt bad pushing phones and worse charging ignorant people $30 for an HDMI cable that could be had from eforcity for under a dollar, and would therefore frequently steer customers away towards Amazon for such items. This practice somewhat perversely earned me regular customers, and by the end of the summer I was running what amounted to an off the books IT support desk out of the store where people would bring in their laptops and phones and I would troubleshoot their problems for 50-100 bucks. Thanks for providing me with retail space for my small business RadioShack!