That's because Intertan ran the stores in Canada under license from Radioshack US (smart way to do it), and then when Intertan was bought by Circuit City, RadioShack obviously asked for their license back...which they got .
Completely different management....
Lots of retailers going under....good times...good times...
Radio shack died off with the advent of the internet, big box stores and the decline/advancement of hobbyist electronics.
I think it was more than that, as with the 90's we saw that not only RadioShack had the monopoly on cheap Chinese garbage electronics - every big box store was now peddling it.
Seriously, think back to the 80's and every no-name garbage piece of electronics manufactured back then came out of RadioShack, more than just InterTAN and Realistic.
Radio shack died off with the advent of the internet, big box stores and the decline/advancement of hobbyist electronics.
I think it was more than that, as with the 90's we saw that not only RadioShack had the monopoly on cheap Chinese garbage electronics - every big box store was now peddling it.
Seriously, think back to the 80's and every no-name garbage piece of electronics manufactured back then came out of RadioShack, more than just InterTAN and Realistic.
Yup but back then "electronics" was a novelty, not like it is now, unless you go super high end and your margins go up through the roof. Radio shack didn't have the square footage or buying power to compete.
(which even then is marginal as everything is licensed by one or two Chinese manufacturers per type and re-branded).
This place has become my Radioshack in the 2010's - »store.qkits.com/ (I happen to live about 1.2km from their storefront so that doesn't hurt either).
For anything more technical, Digikey simply can not be beat for price, stock, and speed of shipment. If I order something from Digikey for a project I'm working on at home, and I get the order placed before about 4pm in the afternoon, the parts are without fail always waiting for me the next day when I get home from the office. I can get any connector, resistor, wire, capacitor, logic gate package, cable assembly, etc. you can think of for prototyping or even production (and they couldn't care less if you're a company, an individual, a hobbyist, etc - you're treated like a prime customer buying one pack of 1/4w resistors as much as you are for buying a reel of 10,000 surface mount chips)
Honestly, with places like Digikey and Newark online for components, Tiger Direct, NCIX, and Canada Computers online for your computer and gadget needs, Best Buy and Futureshop for your gaming and home entertainment needs, and Walmart for cheap wires and household electronics - what world was Radioshack really relevant in any longer.
Radio shack died off with the advent of the internet, big box stores and the decline/advancement of hobbyist electronics.
Successful stores adapt.
They blew it in the mobile phone market, the computer sales market, the home security market, they never really entered the computer servicing market (such as a competitor's Geek Squad)....
Such things would have brought in much more money than hobbyist electronics.
Big Box stores may be too big, perhaps a typical RS store was too small and didn't have enough staff to be proactive rather than reactive.
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Ah, how times change. In the US at one point they merged with a competitor (Allied Radio) and the feds forced a breakup saying they would be too powerful and dominant!
Radio shack died off with the advent of the internet, big box stores and the decline/advancement of hobbyist electronics.
I think it was more than that, as with the 90's we saw that not only RadioShack had the monopoly on cheap Chinese garbage electronics - every big box store was now peddling it.
Seriously, think back to the 80's and every no-name garbage piece of electronics manufactured back then came out of RadioShack, more than just InterTAN and Realistic.
HEYYYY......I LOVED MY TRS-80 COCO2!....complete with TAPE DRIVE....
My parents couldn't afford the fancy shiny commodore 64 so...I got a TRS-80....I have no clue what it cost them but I'm sure even for a crappy computer it was expensive for the day...$300 bucks on a computer wasn't chump change in 1985....
(Source: internets on that price, could have been more in Canada)
But yes, I remember it being a place for garbage electronics...Realistic...ahh my parents had purchased a "Cordless phone system" from them... 42/43mhz, good times!!
I loved radioshack when I was a teenager tinkering with electronics/gadgets...
The Source is now a tiny shell of what RadioShack was in Canada...
Here here. I used to go to Radio Shack to see and buy those tethered remote control robots with the hydraulic arm that used to pick up sugar cubes, I also bought many electronic gadgets it was fun times, sad to see them go. If you guys want to visit similar electronic stores go to Pacific Mall in Toronto.
Btw why nobody mentions that Radio Shack went under due to the chinese invasion of electronics and the spin off independent shops run by south asians.
Seriously, think back to the 80's and every no-name garbage piece of electronics manufactured back then came out of RadioShack, more than just InterTAN and Realistic.
being close to the border i used to get the canadian and american catalogs and comparison shop. The cat no.'s used to match, made things easy. In the 90s they got better in their quality. At one point the Genexxa audio stuff in canada and Optimus in the states (same stuff different house brand) was all re-badged pioneer gear. Even the remote link cables worked with real pioneer stuff. They had some Genexxa/optimus speakers that were rebadged Cerwin Vega speakers. Still had the CV on the woofer. The calculators were Casio (pop the RS plate off the back and finde the casio one) the "pro" microphones were all manufactured by Shure. Hiding decent gear behind the house brand though was not doing them any favors.
Genexxa, thank you, that was one of the crappy brands I was trying to remember! I've never seen a Radio Shack brand hiding anything of quality but the possibility doesn't surprise me.
Genexxa, thank you, that was one of the crappy brands I was trying to remember! I've never seen a Radio Shack brand hiding anything of quality but the possibility doesn't surprise me.
When i bought a pioneer pro logic receiver in 1993 i went over to radio scrap for some RCA cables and saw my reciever on the shelf, IDENTICAL but with the genexxa name on it.
lol that's awesome! I wonder if this is a situation of Pioneer making something crap or Genexxa stamping their name on something good... I had a lot of Pioneer items from the 90's and I believe they were good quality.
Genexxa, thank you, that was one of the crappy brands I was trying to remember! I've never seen a Radio Shack brand hiding anything of quality but the possibility doesn't surprise me.
Genexxa was a RadioShack Canada name, not a US one. After Tandy Corp spun off the international operations into InterTan (get the name?) the CEO started thinking big. When first spun off there were stores in Canada, UK, Australia, and in continental Europe and they knew that a lot of the Radioshack names did not work overseas. They went out to find names that worked in all locations.
Next they even tried out store rebranding. It was only Canada that used the name RadioShack, others used Tandy and different variations of that. There were a few Genexxa test stores as an attempt at rebranding. Another reason for this was cost: they had to pay a licensing fee to Tandy for use of the RS names.
Finally that CEO was ousted (Tandy still had a large ownership of InterTan) and all that stopped and a move back to RadioShack progressed.
Until Tandy owned less and less of InterTan and the InterTan board decided to sell and cash in. That was when Circuit City bought a majority in InterTan. Tandy Inc, now RadioShack Corp, went to court to break the licensing deal. They won and the stores became The Source and a rebranding happened anyway. By this time all overseas operations has been closed or sold off.
Ughh you walk into The Source and they desperately try to sell you a cellphone & plan infact every single employee in the store takes a turn trying to sell you as if they had a gun to their head and they needed that one sale to live it's crazy, annoying and makes shopping in their stores very uncomfortable!
They blew it in the mobile phone market, the computer sales market, the home security market, they never really entered the computer servicing market (such as a competitor's Geek Squad)....
Such things would have brought in much more money than hobbyist electronics.
That is the one thing I was always curious about. They never got into "in house repairs" but managed to do everything else. Especially during the "internet revolution" and advent of "geek squad" which makes a killing.
Something about training, licensing, and insurance costs (and whatnot) but who knows.
My dad is an electronics repair tech and he 'lived' at radio shack until the advent of easy to use e-catalouges with canadian fulfillment.
I always thought it was crap. It probably wasn't crap.
My father had that receiver when I was just a young lad, it was a powerhouse, 120 watts per channel into 8 ohms. I think the OEM was Foster/Fostex, they were good quality built to last as they had to compete with the nice Pioneer receivers of the time. If you find any kicking around in good shape it'll likely still work and will sound better than most of todays junk.
Most of the designs were loosly based off of Pioneer receivers, there was one point where Foster used a toroidal power transformer in one of these Realistic units which made Pioneer unhappy, and suing Radio Shack for being too similar of a design, causing them to go back to using standard E core power transformers.
As for Optimus, all of their VCR's were OEM'd by Panasonic, decent quality again.
There was also another spinoff store from radio shack or was it a spin off of the source by circuit city??? trying to remember their name? It was a wierd name like gennexia or something. Iknow they were the same chain cus they sold the same in store brand nexxxia