The author, John Marek, is a writer and executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
Whenever I drive into Anson County from the west on U.S. Hwy. 74, I pass a derelict Radio Shack sign in front of the Food Lion plaza in Marshville, and my thoughts meander in two directions. First: Wasn’t that kind of a strange place for a Radio Shack? Second: Whatever happened to Radio Shack?
My first experience with “The Shack” came in 1977. I was groping around for an interesting school science fair project when I came across an article in Popular Mechanics describing how to build an “old-time” crystal radio set. The instructions seemed complicated enough to do a good project, yet not so difficult to be intimidating. The article noted that the required components could be purchased at Radio Shack for about $5. That sealed the deal.
I had not stepped foot in a Radio Shack before that. We certainly didn’t have one in the small, rural town where I grew up, and although there was one about a half-hour away in Sandusky, it wasn’t in the area we generally shopped. I was a little familiar with them from newspaper and television ads, which were particularly common around Christmas. Those ads betrayed a schizophrenic retail mix of mid-level consumer goods, like radios, phones and toys, along with hard-core electronic hobbyist supplies like multimeters, circuit boards and transistors.
A few days after reading the article, I convinced my dad to drive me, parts list in hand, over to the store, which was in the middle of a residential neighborhood, and not a great one, at that. I needed four things for the project: No. 24 enameled copper wire, a germanium crystal diode, a
high impedance earphone, and a 365 pF variable tuning capacitor. Conveniently, the PM article provided the Radio Shack part numbers. Although they cost a bit more than $5, the first three items were no problem, but the variable capacitor was an issue. Despite having a Radio Shack part number, the salesperson checked his catalogs and his stock lists and ultimately denied that such an item existed. While outside the purview of this story, let me add briefly that my quest for that 365 picofarad variable tuning capacitor would make a fine alternative reality/fantasy novel. What I know now, that I didn’t know then, is I could have MADE one from a toilet paper roll, tin foil, Scotch tape and wire. Where was YouTube when you really needed it?
Sometime between that science fair project and my driver’s license, the Radio Shack moved from the sketchy neighborhood location to the Sandusky Mall. This incarnation was more of a consumer electronics store, with the radios and stereos and nascent computers upfront and the diodes and circuit boards and, presumably, variable capacitors relegated to a few shelves in the back. I never bought much there – a pocket radio and some stereo cables come to mind – but it was a fun place to browse. One quirky thing about Radio Shack, which I believe continued to their first bankruptcy, was that they didn’t use a traditional cash register with price look-up. Instead, the salesperson hand-wrote your purchases on a receipt and added up your total on a calculator. I suppose they saw it as a sort of brand identity, but I always thought it weird that a business billing itself as “The Technology Store” in 1980 used 1890 retail technology.
My final Radio Shack memory has less to do with the store and more to do with the business model, or more accurately, with what was likely a rogue district manager. In 1989, the software company where I worked was acquired by Microsoft, and most of the staff, myself included, was shown the door. Looking for my next job, I came across a classified ad for Radio Shack store manager. While it was hardly my dream job, there were bills to pay, and I sent in my resume. A week or so later, I received a call from the secretary of the district manager inviting me to an interview. At the prescribed date and location, I arrived 15 minutes early with a fresh copy of my resume and a (fake) smile on my face. Somewhat to my surprise, the small room was filled with about a dozen candidates. It would have been nice if the secretary had mentioned it was a group interview, but, okay, fair enough. At precisely the top of the hour, a burly man dressed in khakis and a red Radio Shack polo shirt strode into the room, announced his name, and launched into a monologue that wouldn’t have been far out of place at Parris Island.
A minute or two into the rant, a latecomer walked through the door and took a seat in the back. “What’s your name, son? Do you have a good excuse for being late? Let me answer that for you. There is no good excuse for being late. Get out.” The poor, mortified man slinked out, and the drill sargea… er, district manager, continued his screed. I get it. Being late for an interview is not a good look. But coming across as a complete a-hole isn’t incredibly flattering, either.
Upon completion of his discourse about the joys and responsibilities of working for Radio Shack, he explained that he would call us into a separate room, individually, for a preliminary interview and IF any of us made the grade, which he kind of doubted by the looks of us, they would be brought back for a “real” interview.
I understood that his bluster was just a way of getting us to self-select how badly we wanted the job. Still, the idea of working for someone so blatantly manipulative and boorish did not appeal to me in the least, and I self-selected right out the door along with two or three others who valued their self-respect more than a Radio Shack “manager” name tag.
That experience soured me on the brand, and even though there was a Radio Shack within walking distance of my Perrysburg condo, I went into that store maybe once or twice in five years. The chain itself kind of withered away, brought low by big-box electronic retailers like Best Buy. In a last gasp for relevance, it attempted to reinvent itself as a phone and tablet specialty shop in the early 2000s, ala the Apple Store, but that was, predictably, a flop. Twice driven to the brink of extinction, the venture is making a “comeback” as an online store with about 400 local brick and mortar independent “authorized dealers.” Apparently, their corporate consultant didn’t have the heart to tell them about Amazon.