Staples closing 225 stores across the US...Radio Shack closing 1,100

[SoonerDave]

Staples to close 225 stores - Mar. 6, 2014

Tried to find a list of individual closings, but no such luck.

Radio Shack dumping 1,100 retail outlets as well.

[Mel]

I quit going to radio shack when they stopped carrying tubes to fix your tv and radio.

[bchris02]

RadioShack is a dinosaur that I am surprised is still in existence. In my opinion it would make more sense to still have Blockbuster than it is to have RadioShack. On top of it all, RadioShacks usually seem to be in dilapidated shopping centers. I haven't bought anything there since probably the year 2000. How do they make money?

Staples on the other hand I can see closing some locations but hope it doesn't go away completely.

[Achilleslastand]

That sucks about Radio Shack, i was so excited about being a member in their "battery club".

[gjl]

That sucks about Radio Shack, i was so excited about being a member in their "battery club".

Must be because of those long lines they have at the drive thru that take forever to get your batteries. And those counters in the stores, battery acid all over them that hasn't been wiped up in who knows how long. You could see it coming for a while. Especially with those Battery Plus stores opening up everywhere eating into their market share.

[RadicalModerate]

Staples to close 225 stores - Mar. 6, 2014

Tried to find a list of individual closings, but no such luck.

Radio Shack dumping 1,100 retail outlets as well.

Obviously, it's a plot by DunderMifflin to recapture the market.
(orchestrated by the wily--and inscrutable--Black as compared to Red Chinese =)

[BBatesokc]

I gave up on Radio Shack a few years ago when it became overly apparent their product selection and customer service were non-existent.

I loved the days when a Radio Shack employee actually knew what they were talking about.

As for Staples. I agree their stores could be much smaller. But I still find them vey useful. They say more and more people order office supplies online - I've personally never done that. When I need paper, pens and staples..... i need them NOW.

[Snowman]

Office Depo and Staples locating stores either within a mile of each other or in some cases in the same shopping center seemed like it was eventually going to be a problem, yea you do not want to surrender a region to a competitor but relatively few places really have a demand large enough for both within five miles of each other is going to cut into both's buisness

[SoonerDave]

Must be because of those long lines they have at the drive thru that take forever to get your batteries. And those counters in the stores, battery acid all over them that hasn't been wiped up in who knows how long. You could see it coming for a while. Especially with those Battery Plus stores opening up everywhere eating into their market share.

I hear some BatteryPlus stores may start selling ice cream

[BBatesokc]

Office Depo and Staples locating stores either within a mile of each other or in some cases in the same shopping center seemed like it was eventually going to be a problem, yea you do not want to surrender a region to a competitor but relatively few places really have a demand large enough for both within five miles of each other is going to cut into both's buisness

Sorta like Walgreens and CVS.

Of course on the flip side I've seen two Starbucks right across the street from each other.

[RadicalModerate]

How about Home Depot and Lowe's?
(if Menard's decides to enter the market even more confusion will ensue)

[kevinpate]

I went to a Radio Shack this week, first time in eons.
Somehow dropped the usb cable for an ext. HD from my vest pocket. Struck out at B Buy and the OU store at the corner. A bit later I was getting a soda and realized RS was across street.

Yea RS in this instance.

[gjl]

I still go to Radio Shack when I need a common resistor, transistor, capacitor, or switch, but I doubt those kinds of purchases keep their doors open.

[SoonerDave]

I think RS is just a really long-termed holdover from the same era that gave us the wonderful old Heathkit electronics company. They used to sell all kinds of build-it-yourself electronics kits for everything from radios to printers to projection televisions - even knew someone who built the projection TV from Heathkit. There used to be a Heathkit store on S Western just north of I-240 back in the day, believe it or not.

Radio Shack gave itself a bit more longevity when it jumped into the personal computing era back in the 70's, and tried desperately to stay relevant once PC clones became commodity hardware items into the middle and late 80's, but they could never quite break free of the proprietary hardware notion as a "hook" to keep you beholden to their stuff. I had an old Tandy 1000 PC and wanted to put in my first actual hard drive - a 20MB monster - but my stock PC hard drive wouldn't work because RS purposely used a different interrupt scheme on their controller boards. Fortunately, however, a sharp screwdriver and some good instructions showed me how to break the trace on the controller board that set the interrupt, and where to make the connection to reset the "standard" value, and voila...

Had to get a warranty repair on the thing later (unrelated to the HD), and the manager whined "That's a non-radio-shack hard drive," multiple times, but finally agreed to do the repair...

Sorry for the rabbit chase

Once they were irrelevant on the PC side, RS didn't have much of anywhere left to go. They've lived off inertia, batteries, and cell phone sales since then, I guess. Not too many hobbyists building things from breadboards these days, I'd guess.. ..(although I've tried )

[bchris02]

I loved the days when a Radio Shack employee actually knew what they were talking about.

Yeah, it was "You got questions, we got answers." Now it's "You got questions, we have...a really awkward stare and a rude attitude so you leave us alone because we don't want to be at work."

[Dubya61]

Don't count Radio Shack out just yet. They are in the throes of (yet another) campaign to find their place in the market. I think they still have a chance.

[Garin]

More example of humans being replaced by machines.

[ctchandler]

SoonerDave,
There was a Heathkit store on N. W. Expressway, just East of May. They had one of the best stereo receiver/amp units on the market, the AR-1500 (I think that's the model). I still use RS once in a while but the last time was for a resistor and like someone said, they aren't going to survive on sales like that. As far as Staples, I haven't been to one in several years, no reason except they aren't near where I normally go. I guess the Edmond one was but it's been gone for a few years.
C. T.

I think RS is just a really long-termed holdover from the same era that gave us the wonderful old Heathkit electronics company. They used to sell all kinds of build-it-yourself electronics kits for everything from radios to printers to projection televisions - even knew someone who built the projection TV from Heathkit. There used to be a Heathkit store on S Western just north of I-240 back in the day, believe it or not.

[traxx]

What I think is the problem with these retailers shutting stores down is that they've tried to compete with online stores on price. They can't win that battle. They should compete with them by having stuff in stock and having lots of selection in stock.

Say for instance you want a tablet. You've researched and found what you want. You got to Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot etc. They have a couple of models but not what you want. You want it right now and if they had it, you'd purchase it and walk away with it. That's something that Amazon can't do. Even with Amazon Prime delivery. But since they have a measly selection in store stock, they tell you to look at their website. Why would you do that? If you're going online to purchase it, then why not just go to a place like Amazon and get it cheaper?

These stores would really help themselves out if they had plenty of items in stock. You could go in, look at it in person, touch it, buy it and have it right then and there. Immediately. No waiting, no tracking packages. It may cost a little more but people will pay for that convenience. Especially if it's something they really want.

I could be wrong on all this, but that's my thought.

[bchris02]

What I think is the problem with these retailers shutting stores down is that they've tried to compete with online stores on price. They can't win that battle. They should compete with them by having stuff in stock and having lots of selection in stock.

Say for instance you want a tablet. You've researched and found what you want. You got to Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot etc. They have a couple of models but not what you want. You want it right now and if they had it, you'd purchase it and walk away with it. That's something that Amazon can't do. Even with Amazon Prime delivery. But since they have a measly selection in store stock, they tell you to look at their website. Why would you do that? If you're going online to purchase it, then why not just go to a place like Amazon and get it cheaper?

These stores would really help themselves out if they had plenty of items in stock. You could go in, look at it in person, touch it, buy it and have it right then and there. Immediately. No waiting, no tracking packages. It may cost a little more but people will pay for that convenience. Especially if it's something they really want.

I could be wrong on all this, but that's my thought.

This sounds great and I wish it could work, but unfortunately I am not sure it would and the stores would end up having a lot of overhead keeping products relatively few people wanted. Look at CompUSA for instance. Their selection was light years above and beyond what Best Buy offers, a true geek's playground, yet they were one of the first casualties of showrooming.

[Jim Kyle]

This sounds great and I wish it could work, but unfortunately I am not sure it would and the stores would end up having a lot of overhead keeping products relatively few people wanted. Look at CompUSA for instance. Their selection was light years above and beyond what Best Buy offers, a true geek's playground, yet they were one of the first casualties of showrooming.

The old RS rule was that every month, each store would get a list of its inventory turnover, sorted by number of items sold that month. The top 500 items would be retained in inventory and the rest put on clearance, with new items sent in based on chain-wide sales. It worked pretty well for them!

A one-time president of the firm (back when it was still part of the Tandy empire) wrote a book about how to manage retail and included that tidbit. He also wrote about avoiding ad agencies with a passion, since their main goal seemed to be winning awards, not turning over inventory.

When they introduced the dear old Trash-80, for a short time they had the best market share of all PC makers. However they never knew how to promote it, and as mentioned earlier in the thread, cut their own throats by trying to lock in all customers. Once IBM entered the fray, RS was a dying duck... For a while, I had fun selling TRS-80 Model 4 speedup kits (anyone remember the Fast-4 package?) via mail order, but that eventually dried up as the IBM-compatible market crowded everything else out.

Then they got bought by an outfit run by MBAs, and began the long slide downhill. I no longer darken their doors, even for batteries. Walgreen's (!!!) has a wider selection and lower prices.

As for CompUSA, they never did keep a really good selection of merchandise. The last printer I bought there, and the last laptop as well, I had to take the display unit off the shelf since they didn't have any more in the store! As I recall the reports at the time, what killed them was mismanagement at the very highest level that resulted in exactly that disconnect between their ads and their actual store stock levels, nationwide.

[TheTravellers]

This sounds great and I wish it could work, but unfortunately I am not sure it would and the stores would end up having a lot of overhead keeping products relatively few people wanted. Look at CompUSA for instance. Their selection was light years above and beyond what Best Buy offers, a true geek's playground, yet they were one of the first casualties of showrooming.

I believe Fry's is using that sales model and they're fairly successful...

[bchris02]

I believe Fry's is using that sales model and they're fairly successful...

Fry's are only in major cities and/or cities with a large tech presence and have a limited number of locations per metro area. It would be rare if not impossible to see a Fry's in a city the size of OKC for instance. CompUSA pretty much went everywhere Best Buy does and that model doesn't work without a huge population base to support it.

[TheTravellers]

Fry's are only in major cities and/or cities with a large tech presence and have a limited number of locations per metro area. It would be rare if not impossible to see a Fry's in a city the size of OKC for instance. CompUSA pretty much went everywhere Best Buy does and that model doesn't work without a huge population base to support it.

Yep, I know, I just mentioned that it seemed to be a successful model, not that it was viable in OKC.

[traxx]

This sounds great and I wish it could work, but unfortunately I am not sure it would and the stores would end up having a lot of overhead keeping products relatively few people wanted. Look at CompUSA for instance. Their selection was light years above and beyond what Best Buy offers, a true geek's playground, yet they were one of the first casualties of showrooming.

I think CompUSA's downfall was the changing landscape of computers. People stopped buying towers and customizing them. Computers started getting cheaper and cheaper. Laptops became popular and were for the most part a closed box environment. As bandwidth increased, software began to be disseminated online more so than in boxes on shelves. CompUSA became a niche store for the tinkerer much like Radio Shack. I don't know that having too much stock on the shelf was a major contributor to the downfall of CompUSA.