I spent over 4000 dollars there between 1980 and 1988. The biggest was the sta 2100 reciever. Most powerful one they ever offered. Still plays till this day.
To me, Radio Shack was like Disneyland for audio and electronics geeks. In the 90's, when Radio Shack abandoned electronic enthusiasts for cell phone sales, Fry's Electronics kind of took over, but Fry's didn't offer as many raw components as RS and their staff was totally incompetent. I still remember those drawers of transistors, resistors, MOSFETs, caps, pots, and so on at Radio Shack. Back then, when I asked for 5 kOhm resistors with 5% tolerance I didn't get that "Bambi in the headlights" look from the guy at the counter. He even knew which drawer to open, and he recommended 1% tolerance resistors instead as they were only a few cents more expensive! Try and find this kind of knowledgeable service today. Bare speakers, receivers, cassette decks, EQs, and those legendary Mach 3 speakers. What great memories! So sad it's all gone. Man! I miss the 80's!
I am both a fan of Shack (since 1980) & Frys (since 1992, after taking over from Incredible Universe). Frys may not have had more different electronic parts than Shack but I think they had just enough of the fundamental stuff, like capacitors, resistors, & things like that. And a wider bigger variety of other more stuff than the Shack, since Frys stores were gigantic warehouses. I bought both electronic parts & electronic tools from both places. Now both stores are basically gone & you now basically have to buy all this stuff online. Shack is still around, but only as a website (& recently bought by a new group again) & really only a very few stores around the world. Each store did enjoy their time in their eras, with the Shack being first & the longest. At least the Shack made its century mark as a business, when most stores in history never make that mark. What's funny is that the Shack training video above also talks about their "blockbuster" advertising which reminds me of the now defunct Blockbuster Video, which I also used to be a fan of & of which I have since kept their ID card as a memento of those times. 04/19/24
Back in the days and before when you can walk into a Radio Shack and at least one salesman had a ham license. You could spend hours in there getting ideas, looking at new equipment. A lot of good memories.
This was an actual RadioShack located in near mid-city LA. They should have done a training video on civil unrest, cos everything you see in this store was looted (even the front store sign) during the 1992 riots. The sign somehow made its way to a privately owned signage museum.
Oh, Lord. A "brown store" I managed 6332 in Roseville, MI from 2001-2002. All the other stores had moved on to the gray store model, but we were waiting for a new space in the Eastgate Center. The next mgr did that move, while I was promoted to the Oakland Mall store (Troy, MI). A little boy asked me why my store was different. I told him we were standing in a time capsule from 1972. 😄
This video is pre-1990, before they incorporated The Technology Store 'look'. That said, they mention CD or Compact Disc, in the beginning of the video, so that places the time frame in the late 1980's. I'd guess the video came out in 1986 or 87. Dry as the content may be, 'corporate' was pretty inflexible on their expectations, especially when it came to store presentation. Keep in-mind the timeframe in which this video was released predates the likes of Best Buy, Target, MediaPlay, Circuit City, etc... The Internet didn't exist as we know it, there was no Amazon or ebay. Sears, Kmart, JCPenny, Montgomery Wards, & Prange's were some of the main retailers of the day. Radio Shack in those days was very unique in the product lines that it carried. TV/Stereos, Computers, Phones, CB Radio/Scanners/Shortwave Radios, Car Stereos, Burgler Alarms, & Electronic Parts - just to name a few. No other retailer covered all of those catagories under one roof, at that time, on a nationwide basis.
I spent hundreds of dollars in Radio Shack during this era. However, many were small purchases such as an adapter, battery, component or other small dollar item (Amazon and eBay sell these today). I remember that in the late 80's I could buy single use batteries for about 15 cents each when other stores charged twice as much (Amazon has a lot of this market today but instead of buying one or two you buy 100 at a time). I did have the CoCo 2 and most of the accessories, though. I am curious as to what my credit limit would have been, though -- no one ever attempted to sell me on Citiline and I used my VISA or MasterCard for large purchases (paid off when the statement came, of course).
Target already had 235 U.S. stores by July 1986. Circuit City was quickly emerging as a Radio Shack competitor at this time; by April 1986 it had 73 stores and sales above $700 million a year. Best Buy was founded in 1980 and by 1986 began an expansion program beyond the Twin Cities into Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota.
Radio Shack should have morphed into a Circuit City or a Best Buy. Sears should have morphed into Amazon. They both dropped the ball and paid the price.
Yes! And, did you know Kmart (of _all_ places) was one of the first, if not the _the_ first, national retailer to sell online? ua-cam.com/video/VJWLd4nhLI4/v-deo.html _They_ coulda beena contenda!
For the first 30 years of its existence, Sears was a catalog business only. Then, as cities grew and expanded into suburbs, Sears was able to get more customers by opening department stores nationwide. Unfortunately, Sears missed the same opportunity Blockbuster Video did by failing to understand that physical locations where customers purchase items would rapidly be replaced by commerce by online purchasing, which is why Amazon is beating old fashioned retailers today.
There are still approximately 500 privately owned RadioShack dealer-franchise stores out there. And they are being supported by the IP's now ownership.
I never lit up in a store or restaurant as I smoked cigars (there were a few bars where cigar smoking was acceptable, it was common courtesy to ask the bartender before firing a cigar up) but I remember smoking being just about everywhere. Our misguided state legislators banned smoking in just about every business establishment here in Michigan many years ago, really hurting the bar business in the state.
I owned a Tandy 1000 when it was new and cutting edge. It was a piece of shit. I very soon moved to IBM. I also had a model 100. It was a great piece of gear. I used the hell out of it years beyond it's intended life.
I still have the Tandy 1000 PC, in good working condition, shown in the video, handed down freely to me from a family friend back in the mid 1990s. 04/19/24
I worked in a Radio Shack in the mid-90s. Smoking was permitted in the manager's office/stock room, and all managers smoked, 100% of them. In theory, it was not permitted in the store, but no one cared. I remember a customer dousing a cigarette before walking into the store, and one of my colleagues ran to the door to stop him, and told him to enjoy his cigarette while shopping in the store.
16:52 - The CitiLine Credit Card was Radio Shack's first credit card. The CitiLine was accepted at Radio Shack, as well as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, and Carte Blanche.
@@areality40 At least in my area of the country they had bins full of different size batteries, they even carried the then rare N size (about the size of a small jelly bean) battery my satellite television remotes required -- back then Amazon didn't exist.
23:08 They really stressed that $20 minimum, note the balance is due in 33 months, so only true up to $660. Yet approval cedit lines up to $25,000. I never really understood the business model of this store being an early 80's baby and having worked there a short stint in the early 2000's. By this time their model was built off cell phone sales and lies. Employee moral was low. Daily returns that employees avoided due to backlash from management. Felt dirty everyday going in to work. They were in desperate need of store managers. In my mid 20's at the time, glad I changed course and went back to school instead of persuing a career with them.
Sold cellphones for Radio Shack in the mid-2000s pre-iPhone at an RMS kiosk after returning from Japan. It was incredible how miserable the storefronts were while the kiosks cannibalized store cellphone sales. At one point in time, much like Sears, if you had a job at Radio Shack, you were set. I'm glad I was laid off.
Mistake 1... fill out the app for the customer asking them all the questions.. and "most applications approved" heck i recall there being maybe 25% approval rate..
Really cool video, thanks for posting! This "model" Radioshack of the past looks like a small "Bestbuy" maybe they failed because they stayed "Small" and easy to forget
Radio Shack was my life as a kid and for several years when I was old enough to work. I worked at the very first franchise store (22-F002) before later working at a couple of company-owned locations. Here's a video taken in 1989 at 22-F002: ua-cam.com/video/CTjKLl1EKWY/v-deo.html
How about a cordless phone , you'll love it Mister Customer as it breaks and you make 12 return trips to the store so I can try and sell you more crap . It's Radio Shack way of getting you back in the store, by selling you defective merchandise.
The only place in the world where you would walk in, buy a 9 volt battery, and be asked for your name, address, phone number, SSN, and DOB. They drove a lot of people away.
Citibank, the issuer of Radio Shack's Citiline credit card, is still the issuer of more MasterCard and VISA cards than any other financial institution in the world.
@ my store, the phone box for the mall was in my backroom, we use to hook up a handset via clips and I'd listen to the hot manager next door at slack shack talk phone sex to her boyfriend or I'd answer incoming calls to other stores and pretend I was that store, and curse the caller out for calling lol .
Actually, I still have a landline with phones, an answering machine, caller ID, call waiting and the whole bit. The days of getting that for $20-$30 a month are gone, though -- I pay about $70 a month for my landline (many in my area have given up the landline but I have not). I pay about $34 a month for my cell phone but if the power goes out after a few hours so does the cell phone (the tower generator runs out of gas) whereas the landline theoretically should never lose service as the switching building has a natural gas powered generator.
Like many, when I was a kid, RadioShack and Home Depot (and Ace Hardware) were my toy stores. Sure I liked Legos and videogames, but I hated typical toys stores. Around the year 2000, I got hired at RadioShack because I walked in to buy one of those white AC adapter bricks with the blue print for my portable speaker set. The store manager was the first to engage me, he asked me if 500 mah would be enough, I said no, they say 900 mah so I'd have to get the 1 amp brick, I think it's an M plug (remember the spider with all the plug ends, each hanging off a foot of wire?) and then I went to the shelf where they had the display of my speakers, brought them to the adapter wall and tested the plug in the socket, and noted the polarity of the plug. He rang me up, didn't offer me any of the bullshit promo stuff, which at the time was 3 cell phone carriers, cell phone accessory bundles, 2 satellite TV carriers, MSN ISP, a Compaq computer, item of the week, battery card.....probably missing like 20 other things. Instead of all that, he offered me a job, just because I read directions and walked in knowing what I needed. That was the standard, having a grasp of AC adapters. See, as expensive as radio shack was, and because they were primarily commission based, they had got in the habit of hiring salesman at the expense of hiring competent people who had even a tiny speck of technological comprehension. I spent nearly 2 woeful years being the only person on staff besides the head manager that could read resistors and most other components, without a chart, and nobody else besides us could solder effectively. I used to quiz my coworkers, many 10-20 years older than me and years of experience, on everything from ohms law to PC usage just so they'd stop asking me stupid questions and looking foolish to savvy customers. Of course, the more I taught them, the more they retained customers and commission, but the head manager would throw sales my way here and there to compensate. The only thing most of them could do is hook up a Stereo, and they still managed to screw that up from time to time. He just never could find anyone who wanted to work there who both wanted to be a salesman and also knew shit about shit, probably because my city was mid tech boom at the time, literally everyone who knew anything about electronic anything could easily have a better job that didn't have sales quotas. The other problem was, my manager was also a rank asshole, and had a nervous breakdown shortly after I quit to pursue one of those non-commission jobs. I....can't imagine I had anything to do with that...I only told him in front of the other associates that he was driving away the one candidate he had to take his place so he could get a cushy corporate job, and if he left one of THOSE jackasses in charge, he'd look like an asshole before he even saw his new desk. The others laughed, despite being offended, probably just shock because they all tiptoes around and babies his ego. Honestly, I was just talking shit on my way out the door, they all knew it, but it seemed I was incidentally right as well. I can imagine having it spelled out for him with an audience by an 18 year old cocky know-it-all jack ass apparently rang through his head a bit too often. He snapped pretty bad, as far as one can go without assaulting anyone, mumbling about getting shafted. It eesmed the higher-ups agreed with me, the new guy they brought in to replace had only started about a year before this, and he was already being groomed for corporate over the first manager who was a 10 year veteran, and he found out about it. When I think of RadioShack, I still think of the good times, but his permafrown still lurks, haunts those memories. My legacy was that I worked at my favorite store, and damn near burned it down. His legacy is passive aggressively teaching me how to handle an imploding narcissist, though detecting those kinds of people ahead of time took much longer to learn. I guess he also taught me to set boundaries with bosses and not take undue BS. It was the perfect first job. I've never told anyone that whole story before, somehow seemed like the right place to leave it. Kind of sums up everything that went wrong with the company, every time they brought in fresh healthy blood, they pushed it right back out the door again. Don't get me started on those damn Blockbuster injections and mall stores. Blockbuster crossover made sense in concept, but the price points were all wrong, and the color schemes were hideous haha truly what the kids today would call "Farming Ls". Jesus, did you read this whole thing?
3 years later haha they sent it in for further processing, to let their in-house reps see if they could offer them any credit line at all not tied to a specific retailer. Of course, if a customer demands you shred it, you probably should.
Radio Shack started assaulting customers when they walked in and then when you actually needed healp finding a certain component they were dumb as rocks. SO you had to go hunting anyway.
I remember the associates being so competent when I would go in with my father as a kid. Once we got past the late 90s I could go in and ask for a resistor and get a blank stare and a line like "Uhhhhhhhhhhh.... we have cell phones. Is that what you want?"
Yep, commission based jobs got pretty nasty in the 90s, and they were supposed to flood every customer with cell phone, satellite and internet carriers, hardware, accessories, plus battery cards, overpriced protection plans and other random BS
Stores didn't have instant credit back then -- Even at Sears or JC Penney you had to wait for a response (they serviced their own accounts back then so you received a response in days rather than weeks).
Not as much in terms of automation existed. Big data warehouse centers were the only places connected to receive data and had to manually punch in the requests into a different computer to a queue to get things processed. They then had to transcribe that back out.
@@lynnboyer6643 My local stores wanted name, address and phone number for every purchase, even if you paid in cash. Granted, they also rented VCR tapes but why did they need all that info for a 75 cent battery purchase?
It was extremely difficult to get a high credit line (by today's standards) back then. IIRC my VISA credit line in 1985 was $10K and I had/have excellent credit. Back then you could easily vacation on $10K, nowadays you would blow through that in less than a week. I never had a Citiline account (never even applied).
Radio Shack was my life as a kid and for several years when I was old enough to work. I worked at the very first franchise store (22-F002) before later working at a couple of company-owned locations. Here's a video taken in 1989 at 22-F002: ua-cam.com/video/CTjKLl1EKWY/v-deo.html
This company has a bright future.
BAHAHA... Right in the 🚽
They did for a long time.
@@46GarageUSA At the time of this video they did have a bright future. Especially the awesome RC cars of the 2000s.
@@PlayWaves1remember the tracked hummer h2s? They were actually decent
I spent over 4000 dollars there between 1980 and 1988. The biggest was the sta 2100 reciever. Most powerful one they ever offered. Still plays till this day.
Rumour has it Marty went delinquent on the cordless phones
To me, Radio Shack was like Disneyland for audio and electronics geeks. In the 90's, when Radio Shack abandoned electronic enthusiasts for cell phone sales, Fry's Electronics kind of took over, but Fry's didn't offer as many raw components as RS and their staff was totally incompetent.
I still remember those drawers of transistors, resistors, MOSFETs, caps, pots, and so on at Radio Shack. Back then, when I asked for 5 kOhm resistors with 5% tolerance I didn't get that "Bambi in the headlights" look from the guy at the counter. He even knew which drawer to open, and he recommended 1% tolerance resistors instead as they were only a few cents more expensive! Try and find this kind of knowledgeable service today.
Bare speakers, receivers, cassette decks, EQs, and those legendary Mach 3 speakers. What great memories! So sad it's all gone. Man! I miss the 80's!
I am both a fan of Shack (since 1980) & Frys (since 1992, after taking over from Incredible Universe). Frys may not have had more different electronic parts than Shack but I think they had just enough of the fundamental stuff, like capacitors, resistors, & things like that. And a wider bigger variety of other more stuff than the Shack, since Frys stores were gigantic warehouses. I bought both electronic parts & electronic tools from both places. Now both stores are basically gone & you now basically have to buy all this stuff online. Shack is still around, but only as a website (& recently bought by a new group again) & really only a very few stores around the world. Each store did enjoy their time in their eras, with the Shack being first & the longest. At least the Shack made its century mark as a business, when most stores in history never make that mark. What's funny is that the Shack training video above also talks about their "blockbuster" advertising which reminds me of the now defunct Blockbuster Video, which I also used to be a fan of & of which I have since kept their ID card as a memento of those times.
04/19/24
Back in the days and before when you can walk into a Radio Shack and at least one salesman had a ham license. You could spend hours in there getting ideas, looking at new equipment. A lot of good memories.
This was an actual RadioShack located in near mid-city LA. They should have done a training video on civil unrest, cos everything you see in this store was looted (even the front store sign) during the 1992 riots. The sign somehow made its way to a privately owned signage museum.
Was the store remodeled before 1992? I worked at a store in Chicago that looked very much like this in 1992.
AAARRGGGHHHH
Dang!!!
😂😂😂😂
At the 23:40 mark I am surprised Marty doesn't drop his pen and say "HEY I'M RIGHT HERE I CAN HEAR YOU!!"
Oh, Lord. A "brown store" I managed 6332 in Roseville, MI from 2001-2002. All the other stores had moved on to the gray store model, but we were waiting for a new space in the Eastgate Center. The next mgr did that move, while I was promoted to the Oakland Mall store (Troy, MI). A little boy asked me why my store was different. I told him we were standing in a time capsule from 1972. 😄
Man, I miss Radio Shack.
This video is pre-1990, before they incorporated The Technology Store 'look'. That said, they mention CD or Compact Disc, in the beginning of the video, so that places the time frame in the late 1980's. I'd guess the video came out in 1986 or 87. Dry as the content may be, 'corporate' was pretty inflexible on their expectations, especially when it came to store presentation. Keep in-mind the timeframe in which this video was released predates the likes of Best Buy, Target, MediaPlay, Circuit City, etc... The Internet didn't exist as we know it, there was no Amazon or ebay. Sears, Kmart, JCPenny, Montgomery Wards, & Prange's were some of the main retailers of the day. Radio Shack in those days was very unique in the product lines that it carried. TV/Stereos, Computers, Phones, CB Radio/Scanners/Shortwave Radios, Car Stereos, Burgler Alarms, & Electronic Parts - just to name a few. No other retailer covered all of those catagories under one roof, at that time, on a nationwide basis.
This is a pretty stiff, corporate video. Made you feel like you were part of the Radio Shack Militia...
I spent hundreds of dollars in Radio Shack during this era. However, many were small purchases such as an adapter, battery, component or other small dollar item (Amazon and eBay sell these today). I remember that in the late 80's I could buy single use batteries for about 15 cents each when other stores charged twice as much (Amazon has a lot of this market today but instead of buying one or two you buy 100 at a time). I did have the CoCo 2 and most of the accessories, though. I am curious as to what my credit limit would have been, though -- no one ever attempted to sell me on Citiline and I used my VISA or MasterCard for large purchases (paid off when the statement came, of course).
Target already had 235 U.S. stores by July 1986. Circuit City was quickly emerging as a Radio Shack competitor at this time; by April 1986 it had 73 stores and sales above $700 million a year. Best Buy was founded in 1980 and by 1986 began an expansion program beyond the Twin Cities into Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota.
Look at Marty's credit application. It's dated 5-23-85
Radio Shack should have morphed into a Circuit City or a Best Buy. Sears should have morphed into Amazon. They both dropped the ball and paid the price.
Yes! And, did you know Kmart (of _all_ places) was one of the first, if not the _the_ first, national retailer to sell online?
ua-cam.com/video/VJWLd4nhLI4/v-deo.html
_They_ coulda beena contenda!
Or cowntytLINE credit card
For the first 30 years of its existence, Sears was a catalog business only. Then, as cities grew and expanded into suburbs, Sears was able to get more customers by opening department stores nationwide. Unfortunately, Sears missed the same opportunity Blockbuster Video did by failing to understand that physical locations where customers purchase items would rapidly be replaced by commerce by online purchasing, which is why Amazon is beating old fashioned retailers today.
Makes me want to own and run a Radio Shack!
You can't be serious.
There are still approximately 500 privately owned RadioShack dealer-franchise stores out there. And they are being supported by the IP's now ownership.
"please make you ashtrays remain clean". It's hard to believe there was a time in this country where people could freely smoke anywhere.
Just imagine how many freedoms we have lost since then
I remember in Nevada there was built in ash trays in grocery carts.
I never lit up in a store or restaurant as I smoked cigars (there were a few bars where cigar smoking was acceptable, it was common courtesy to ask the bartender before firing a cigar up) but I remember smoking being just about everywhere. Our misguided state legislators banned smoking in just about every business establishment here in Michigan many years ago, really hurting the bar business in the state.
Turns out Marty was an easy mark and was talked into opening 15 high interest credit card accounts that week.
Who played Marty in the video? It must be some kind of actor from a comedy.
I miss these stores already.
I owned a Tandy 1000 when it was new and cutting edge. It was a piece of shit. I very soon moved to IBM. I also had a model 100. It was a great piece of gear. I used the hell out of it years beyond it's intended life.
IBM let you live there with a radio shack computer ?
I still have the Tandy 1000 PC, in good working condition, shown in the video, handed down freely to me from a family friend back in the mid 1990s.
04/19/24
4:34: last *new* 8-track player -- sold until 1990!
So my battery of the month card is worthless ??
"But what do we tell a customer if he's been declined?"
(Smiles) "We tell him to get his broke ass outta here!"
Sell them a no questions asked mortgage.
10:30 Keep those ashtrays clean!!!! LOL :)
Hubjeep you know nobody wants to be in a Radio Shack with dirty ashtrays
Kmart didn't have ashtrays. You just used the floor.
I worked in a Radio Shack in the mid-90s. Smoking was permitted in the manager's office/stock room, and all managers smoked, 100% of them. In theory, it was not permitted in the store, but no one cared. I remember a customer dousing a cigarette before walking into the store, and one of my colleagues ran to the door to stop him, and told him to enjoy his cigarette while shopping in the store.
I don't remember the local Radioshacks having so many walls....
You can fit just about anything you see here one single cell phone!
2:18 There used to be Disney games about the structure of Government? wow 😂
The store here said " be sure and stack the radio control cars and planes in front so the customer can see them before entering . "
They also did repair on all make&model. This just in Radio shack is back! In Oakville,Ontario Canada
Radio shacks always had a really cool smell
I don't know how your smelt mine smells like pot all the time
Everything in that store is now on your phone.
not the amplifiers!
You would think that is a good thing... But it isn't.
The Radio Shack in this video is massive! Every store I set foot in while they were around was 1/4th the size.
A lot were located in Malls and the stores were very small.
16:52 - The CitiLine Credit Card was Radio Shack's first credit card. The CitiLine was accepted at Radio Shack, as well as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club, and Carte Blanche.
Radio Shack started accepting Diners Club and Carte Blanche in 1985.
I had the radioshack members card
Battery of the month
This would've been better if all the 1st cumeomer wanted were "AA" batteries
Or the stinkin' free red batteries they get each month with that stupid battery card...
@@areality40 At least in my area of the country they had bins full of different size batteries, they even carried the then rare N size (about the size of a small jelly bean) battery my satellite television remotes required -- back then Amazon didn't exist.
23:08 They really stressed that $20 minimum, note the balance is due in 33 months, so only true up to $660. Yet approval cedit lines up to $25,000. I never really understood the business model of this store being an early 80's baby and having worked there a short stint in the early 2000's. By this time their model was built off cell phone sales and lies. Employee moral was low. Daily returns that employees avoided due to backlash from management. Felt dirty everyday going in to work. They were in desperate need of store managers. In my mid 20's at the time, glad I changed course and went back to school instead of persuing a career with them.
Sold cellphones for Radio Shack in the mid-2000s pre-iPhone at an RMS kiosk after returning from Japan. It was incredible how miserable the storefronts were while the kiosks cannibalized store cellphone sales. At one point in time, much like Sears, if you had a job at Radio Shack, you were set. I'm glad I was laid off.
Mistake 1... fill out the app for the customer asking them all the questions.. and "most applications approved" heck i recall there being maybe 25% approval rate..
Really cool video, thanks for posting! This "model" Radioshack of the past looks like a small "Bestbuy" maybe they failed because they stayed "Small" and easy to forget
I like how their "colour" game demo is blue lol. I guess that counts
Why am I watching this?
Radio Shack was my life as a kid and for several years when I was old enough to work. I worked at the very first franchise store (22-F002) before later working at a couple of company-owned locations. Here's a video taken in 1989 at 22-F002: ua-cam.com/video/CTjKLl1EKWY/v-deo.html
Those mustaches thou...
Couple of academy award winners here huh?
A couple of razzies at least
How about a cordless phone , you'll love it Mister Customer as it breaks and you make 12 return trips to the store so I can try and sell you more crap .
It's Radio Shack way of getting you back in the store, by selling you defective merchandise.
Ahhh the good ol days.
This video needs a few Freakazoid cameos (the blue kid-friendly deadpool, for those who don't remember)
I want all the stuff in that store. :)
In 2015, Radio Shack filed for bankruptcy and all 9,400 stores have closed down.
Most if not all of the company-owned stores closed. Many dealer/franchise stores are still in operation.
4:59 my neighbors hated the Mach 2
The only place in the world where you would walk in, buy a 9 volt battery, and be asked for your name, address, phone number, SSN, and DOB. They drove a lot of people away.
I wish I would have had some foresight and invested in technology and Internet stocks
21:19 Marty is a piece of putty customer. The salesman is rolling on him.
An answering machine and two phones for $500 in 1980s money??
Citibank, the issuer of Radio Shack's Citiline credit card, is still the issuer of more MasterCard and VISA cards than any other financial institution in the world.
“Hi, I’m interested in buying a clock that is also a radio. What are your options?”
@26:22, he was proud of that sale.
alot of that stuff is the same price today
@ my store, the phone box for the mall was in my backroom, we use to hook up a handset via clips and I'd listen to the hot manager next door at slack shack talk phone sex to her boyfriend or I'd answer incoming calls to other stores and pretend I was that store, and curse the caller out for calling lol .
At least a couple dozen pieces of electronics products, all replaced by 1 smartphone.
And it's making us all dumber
Actually, I still have a landline with phones, an answering machine, caller ID, call waiting and the whole bit. The days of getting that for $20-$30 a month are gone, though -- I pay about $70 a month for my landline (many in my area have given up the landline but I have not). I pay about $34 a month for my cell phone but if the power goes out after a few hours so does the cell phone (the tower generator runs out of gas) whereas the landline theoretically should never lose service as the switching building has a natural gas powered generator.
Citiline was a huge pain in that ass. BUt, Can make you a hell of a sale if your patient
Radio shack was always a bout brain washing I know I used to be a Radio shack Sales man.
Their technique didn't work then because if you were truly brainwashed you wouldn't know it
THE ASHTRAYS SHOULD BE CLEAN
30-40 minutes to get credit approval?
Like many, when I was a kid, RadioShack and Home Depot (and Ace Hardware) were my toy stores. Sure I liked Legos and videogames, but I hated typical toys stores. Around the year 2000, I got hired at RadioShack because I walked in to buy one of those white AC adapter bricks with the blue print for my portable speaker set. The store manager was the first to engage me, he asked me if 500 mah would be enough, I said no, they say 900 mah so I'd have to get the 1 amp brick, I think it's an M plug (remember the spider with all the plug ends, each hanging off a foot of wire?) and then I went to the shelf where they had the display of my speakers, brought them to the adapter wall and tested the plug in the socket, and noted the polarity of the plug. He rang me up, didn't offer me any of the bullshit promo stuff, which at the time was 3 cell phone carriers, cell phone accessory bundles, 2 satellite TV carriers, MSN ISP, a Compaq computer, item of the week, battery card.....probably missing like 20 other things. Instead of all that, he offered me a job, just because I read directions and walked in knowing what I needed. That was the standard, having a grasp of AC adapters. See, as expensive as radio shack was, and because they were primarily commission based, they had got in the habit of hiring salesman at the expense of hiring competent people who had even a tiny speck of technological comprehension. I spent nearly 2 woeful years being the only person on staff besides the head manager that could read resistors and most other components, without a chart, and nobody else besides us could solder effectively. I used to quiz my coworkers, many 10-20 years older than me and years of experience, on everything from ohms law to PC usage just so they'd stop asking me stupid questions and looking foolish to savvy customers. Of course, the more I taught them, the more they retained customers and commission, but the head manager would throw sales my way here and there to compensate. The only thing most of them could do is hook up a Stereo, and they still managed to screw that up from time to time. He just never could find anyone who wanted to work there who both wanted to be a salesman and also knew shit about shit, probably because my city was mid tech boom at the time, literally everyone who knew anything about electronic anything could easily have a better job that didn't have sales quotas. The other problem was, my manager was also a rank asshole, and had a nervous breakdown shortly after I quit to pursue one of those non-commission jobs. I....can't imagine I had anything to do with that...I only told him in front of the other associates that he was driving away the one candidate he had to take his place so he could get a cushy corporate job, and if he left one of THOSE jackasses in charge, he'd look like an asshole before he even saw his new desk. The others laughed, despite being offended, probably just shock because they all tiptoes around and babies his ego. Honestly, I was just talking shit on my way out the door, they all knew it, but it seemed I was incidentally right as well. I can imagine having it spelled out for him with an audience by an 18 year old cocky know-it-all jack ass apparently rang through his head a bit too often. He snapped pretty bad, as far as one can go without assaulting anyone, mumbling about getting shafted. It eesmed the higher-ups agreed with me, the new guy they brought in to replace had only started about a year before this, and he was already being groomed for corporate over the first manager who was a 10 year veteran, and he found out about it. When I think of RadioShack, I still think of the good times, but his permafrown still lurks, haunts those memories. My legacy was that I worked at my favorite store, and damn near burned it down. His legacy is passive aggressively teaching me how to handle an imploding narcissist, though detecting those kinds of people ahead of time took much longer to learn. I guess he also taught me to set boundaries with bosses and not take undue BS. It was the perfect first job. I've never told anyone that whole story before, somehow seemed like the right place to leave it. Kind of sums up everything that went wrong with the company, every time they brought in fresh healthy blood, they pushed it right back out the door again. Don't get me started on those damn Blockbuster injections and mall stores. Blockbuster crossover made sense in concept, but the price points were all wrong, and the color schemes were hideous haha truly what the kids today would call "Farming Ls". Jesus, did you read this whole thing?
Don't use too many burst signs? Come on! What if everything's on special?
Too many bursts at one time is way too much dopamine for anyone to handle
If you have to borrow $500 from the bank to make your radio shack purchase, YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT.
If the credit is declined , then the application should be destroyed IN front of the customer . NOT need to sent in .
3 years later haha they sent it in for further processing, to let their in-house reps see if they could offer them any credit line at all not tied to a specific retailer. Of course, if a customer demands you shred it, you probably should.
They sell COLOR computers? Sounds super expensive
Radio shack was going to reorganize and become Suit Shack. but realise that the suits are just as crappie.
Wow. Thanks for posting this. What year is this? 1984?
26:58 shows 1985 to the right of the signature I think
@@Sapperton Ahhh I see it! Thanks
Radio Shack started assaulting customers when they walked in and then when you actually needed healp finding a certain component they were dumb as rocks. SO you had to go hunting anyway.
I remember the associates being so competent when I would go in with my father as a kid. Once we got past the late 90s I could go in and ask for a resistor and get a blank stare and a line like "Uhhhhhhhhhhh.... we have cell phones. Is that what you want?"
Yep, commission based jobs got pretty nasty in the 90s, and they were supposed to flood every customer with cell phone, satellite and internet carriers, hardware, accessories, plus battery cards, overpriced protection plans and other random BS
40 mins is too long too wait for a credit decision...also too much paper work 😂
Stores didn't have instant credit back then -- Even at Sears or JC Penney you had to wait for a response (they serviced their own accounts back then so you received a response in days rather than weeks).
Not as much in terms of automation existed. Big data warehouse centers were the only places connected to receive data and had to manually punch in the requests into a different computer to a queue to get things processed. They then had to transcribe that back out.
That sales trainee with the lisp is a little light in the loafers 😂😂😂
“Can I get the last four digits of your phone number?”
It's something that a Radio Shack salesperson asks you when you pay for your purchase(s).
@@lynnboyer6643 My local stores wanted name, address and phone number for every purchase, even if you paid in cash. Granted, they also rented VCR tapes but why did they need all that info for a 75 cent battery purchase?
Who in their right mind would spend $25,000 at Radio Shack?
Ham radio enthusiasts
It wouldn't be hard with all their jacked up prices back then...
It was extremely difficult to get a high credit line (by today's standards) back then. IIRC my VISA credit line in 1985 was $10K and I had/have excellent credit. Back then you could easily vacation on $10K, nowadays you would blow through that in less than a week. I never had a Citiline account (never even applied).
Starcitizen gamers.
Their top of the line Tandy PC computers w/ hard drive, and all the peripherals, add-on software, could easily hit 5k.
Ash trays should be kept clean .
its 2023. AARRGGHHHHHHHH
Where is the PCworld employee video?
You gotta make it sound like your doing the customer a favor, while peddling junk that won't last a month ..
Kids think those phone dials 1abc. 2def. 3ghi are for texting
dammit, I miss the shack..
Awesome
do you have a top loading vcr with a dew light.
I'm getting paid to watch this, right?
Double time
Remind me why I'm using up all my data watching this video?
How old are these videos
I'm going to guess about one or two years old. Radioshack was way behind in technology.
This is circa 1985-1986.
I think 1986. One of the tags says has a sale end date of 7/22/85
@@gregorycutrera8326 Good catch!
16:15 for personal future reference
It goes both ways
2:23...the what?
1985
I wish it was 1985. I feel like I've been stuck in 1984 if you know what I mean
Just sign away your soul..
What a pain in the ass.
ahh neat, the time before capitalism went to a complete disaster!
those radio shack stores were ugly
Radio Shack was my life as a kid and for several years when I was old enough to work. I worked at the very first franchise store (22-F002) before later working at a couple of company-owned locations. Here's a video taken in 1989 at 22-F002: ua-cam.com/video/CTjKLl1EKWY/v-deo.html