Radio Shack at the Maine Mall -- February 27, 2015

Radio Shack at the Maine Mall — February 27, 2015

The picture shown above is the RadioShack at the Maine Mall as of last week.  This store is scheduled to close up shop in a couple of weeks.  However, if you look there is still quite a bit of merchandise left in the store, which means that even a going out of business sale can bring in the people.

 

RadioShack at the mall was one of only 3 stores in the mall that pretty much remained in the same spot during its entire life.  The others being Sears and Olympia Sports, although Olympia may have moved a few inches when the mall remodeled during the early 1990’s.

 

It is interesting that 2 of the original mall stores were in the same wing with Sears being the anchor store at that end.  I knew that end of the mall extremely well as I worked at Woolworth in that end for almost 10 years.  However, they are gone from the mall along with the Waldenbooks and Pet Menagerie that were across the way from Woolworth.   Now with RadioShack leaving, this leaves only Sears from the original mall.  It should be noted that Spencer Gifts (now known as Spencer’s) was originally part of the old mall, but has since moved down to the JCPenney wing.

 

So now the real question is how could RadioShack have been saved?

 

First, let me say that at one point this company was proud of its expansion to 5,000 stores.  This landmark store was located in the mall in Peabody, Massachusetts.  There was even a large plaque located outside the store touting this fantastic feat.  Unfortunately, this store closed up a couple of years ago and the plaque is long gone.  I could imagine that this plaque probably ended up in some dumpster somewhere when the store was gutted and replaced by a Payless Shoe Store.

 

Some of the ways that could have saved the company range from the obvious to the obscure.  Enjoy the following ride through time.

 

  1. The company COULD have hired me 6 years ago as this was the only company that was interested in my application. Of course, you are probably saying “what difference would this have made?”  The truth is that many companies appreciate employee input and I certainly had many creative ideas that could have been implemented, but because they never hired me, it was their loss.
  2. It killed the Tandy brand when it was not doing that badly. Sure jokes can be made about its color computer and its legendary TRS-80 machines, but this was at one time a very competitive company.  Many people loved their machines and were loyal to repurchasing from the same company when looking for a new machine.  As one of the earliest IBM compatible machines, their PCs had features that Big Blue could only dream about.  The big thing about this is that at the time the salespeople were knowledgeable about their products and were always willing to help.  In fact, I remember one RadioShack location that used to have a stack of PCM Magazines next to their machines so that people could see what these machines could do.  For those unfamiliar with PCM Magazine (not to be confused with the more popular PC Magazine), this was dedicated solely to the Tandy brand of computers.  However, many of the articles were generic enough to be used with any DOS compatible machines with little to no modification.  This is quite possibly one of the best magazines for programming games back in the 1990’s.  In a future posting in my other blog, I plan on discussing some of my favorite computer magazines from the bygone era.
  3. The closing of its big boy store Computer City was probably one of the biggest mistakes in RadioShack history. For those who don’t know about this company, this was one of the better computer retail chains of its time.  These stores were like a supermarket of computers and computer-related items.  Aisles and aisles of nothing but software, hardware, and other items at fairly reasonable prices.  The company had roughly a dozen or so stores spread out throughout the country and the nearest one to me was about 150 miles away in Nashua, New Hampshire.  Whenever I was in the area, I would always stop there to look around and sometimes by some piece of software that was hard to find.  The bad thing about this company was that because I lived outside of a 100 mile radius of the store, I never received anything by mail even though I signed up in store to receive any mailings they had to offer.  Sadly, this company died because of its competitors.  Ironically, this store became Staples after the company’s death.  What was even more bothersome to me was when I was on vacation around Orlando, Florida and I saw a bulldozer around a pile of rubble while the large “Computer City” sign was still standing proudly at the former entrance.
  4. The selling of cellphones is probably the biggest mistakes that RadioShack ever made. With so many competitors in this crowded field, they became an also-ran rather than a leader in the cellphone business.  When I was looking for a phone, I checked out the store, but every time I asked the young girl a question, she had to go and get the answer from somewhere else.  This to me was all the proof that I needed that their associates were very poorly trained.
  5. Finally, the selling of those great toys back in the 1970’s. Gone are those great science kits and remote control cars that RadioShack was known for.  Why they really gave up on the tried and true on these items is beyond me, but I can only assume that the science kits became to “old tech” and the cars became sold in other retailers like Sears and JCPenney, along with the other general retailers.

 

Overall, back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, there was no Target, Walmart, Circuit City, Staples, or Best Buy to compete with.  The only competitors locally were Lechmere and Woolworth.  Of course, both of these companies are gone along with Circuit City, so certainly much of the tech area has been hit and miss.  I remember several nights when assistant manager Bill from RadioShack came over to Woolworth to buy a snack and he always said that his store was always “busy”.  Looking over across the way, it was obvious that there were several people in the store shopping for that item that could not be purchased elsewhere at the time.

 

Unfortunately, not even a “going out of business” sale, as shown in the picture above can bring in the customers anymore.  If Bill was still working for the company, he would not be able to say that he was “busy” anymore.

 

But then again, he would not be able to buy his snacks at Woolworth anymore because they bit the dust several years ago.  Another piece of mall history soon to become real history, thankfully I still have the memories of the better days of the mall.

 

At least the mall isn’t dead.

 

Yet.