By Maxine Carter-Lome, publisher

Above: Radio Shack’s mod logo from the 1970s.

Ask anyone who grew up in the second half of the 20th century if they knew about, shopped at, or had a Radio Shack store nearby, and the answer would most probably be yes to all three.

It was “the place to go for gear,” according to The New York Times in a 2014 article that reported on the company’s “history of misses.”

For many of us, Radio Shack was our “first” – an up-close, personal introduction to the latest products driving a pre-Internet consumer electronics revolution in the early days of radio and mobile radio communications. Whenever anyone walked into one of their over 5,000 stores throughout the country, they were assisted by a knowledgeable salesperson and had a chance to try out the latest technologies.

Since then, nothing has been the same except the brand’s enduring legacy of generations of early adaptors of everything from ham-ready equipment to personal computers (TRS-80 Model I), CB radios, car telephones, and GPS devices. Their in-store experiences and memories, and the first-generation products they purchased, ensure Radio Shack will live on in our cultural collectiveness and our collections long after the last brick-and-mortar Radio Shack store closes its door.

From Humble Beginnings

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The story of Radio Shack begins in 1919 in Fort Worth, Texas, with a chance meeting of two friends, Norton Hinckley and Dave L. Tandy (1889-1966), who decided to pool their resources and go into business together. Their venture, which the two gentlemen named the Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company, sold leather shoe parts (soles, heels, and shoelaces) to shoe repair shops in the Fort Worth area.

The Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company grew modestly through the years. Although the company survived the Great Depression, it was nearly crippled when World War II began in 1941. Shoes were rationed—two pairs per adult per year—and leather for civilian use virtually disappeared.

Mr. Tandy’s oldest son, Charles D. Tandy (1918-1978), while serving in the Navy during the war, observed how leathercraft was used as a therapeutic tool for patients in military hospitals and by servicemen in recreation and rehabilitation centers. He told his father that leathercraft was the way to steer the company during the war years – and to prepare for what he believed would be a healthy, new, post-war hobby market.

Two years after the Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company was formed, and half a continent away, two London-born Bostonian brothers, Theodore and Milton Deutschmann, opened a small retail operation in the heart of downtown Boston to provide hobbyists with amateur and ham radio equipment for the new field of amateur radio (also known as ham radio). At the time, this radio technology was cutting-edge, and the field was wide open with plenty of excess equipment left over from the War. An employee named it Radio Shack after the room that housed a ship’s radio equipment, referred to as the Radio Shack. The brothers thought the name was fitting since their store would supply the equipment for ships’ radio officers, as well as ham radio operators. The term was already in use—and is to this day—by hams when referring to the location of their stations.
So, how did a shoe and leather parts business in Texas and retailers of ham radio equipment in Massachusetts come together to build one of the nation’s largest retailers of consumer electronics?

From the “Radio Shack” to RadioShack

The newly formed Radio Shack Corporation under the ownership of the Deutschmann brothers opened the doors of the first Radio Shack store, located in a basement space on Brattle Street in downtown Boston, on January 1, 1936.

In these early years, Radio Shack was an all-cash business and dependent upon a transient trade with the capacity to attract experimenters and amateurs in the electronics field. The Deutschmann brothers soon realized they would need to change their business model if they wanted to grow and be successful.

A postcard promo announcing how to get a Free 1963 Radio Shack catalog with over 10,000 items listed on 284 pages.

In 1938, the Deutschmanns retained the services of a catalog expert to publish Radio Shack’s first catalog. This catalog was intended to attract a mail-order business and an industrial business (sales to schools, laboratories, and industry). In September 1938, 25,000 copies of the catalog, postdated 1939 for use during that year, were published, and in 1939, 40,000 copies, postdated 1940, were published and distributed.

It did not take long before the Radio Shack store was moved to a larger, more pedestrian-friendly location while the company focused on growing its business through mail order, a growing inventory of products, and additional locations throughout Boston.

In 1947, Radio Shack opened the nation’s first audio showroom, providing amplifiers, speakers, turntables, phonograph cartridges, and the like. By this time, the company had an extensive mail-order business and nine retail electronic stores. Yet, despite its success in the marketplace introducing hobbyists and enthusiasts to the latest in radio electronics, Radio Shack was heading for financial ruin.

Poor operating practices, financial management mistakes, and a pile of uncollected receivables stemming from the disastrous credit offerings made to its customers to get them to invest in these new technologies, caught up with the company. By 1960, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was, however, a great year for the Tandy Corporation.

Tandy to the Rescue

Over the years, the Tandy Corporation (the Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company was officially renamed Tandy Corporation in 1961 after the partners split), too, had grown and expanded; however, with Charles Tandy’s vision and the company’s financial management, Tandy was now a multi-million-dollar leather goods corporation. Charles Tandy was now looking for other hobbyist-related businesses into which it could expand and invest.

Charles, who had become intrigued with consumer electronics, saw the small Radio Shack chain as an excellent opportunity for rapid growth. He bought the essentially bankrupt company in 1963 for the equivalent of $300,000 cash and embarked on a plan that turned it into one of the great success stories of American retailing.

Branding the Consumer Electronics Retail Experience

The Grand Opening of a Syracuse Radio Shack

Charles Tandy’s vision for the future of the consumer electronics industry shifted Radio Shack’s focus from radio equipment to hobbyist electronic components and emerging technologies, changing its business from fundamentally mail-order to Main Street, everywhere.

Tandy’s strategy was to appeal to hobbyists by creating small stores that sold mainly private brands and were staffed by people who knew electronics. They closed Radio Shack’s unprofitable mail-order business, ended credit purchases, and eliminated many top management positions but kept the salespeople, merchandisers, and advertisers. They also cut the number of items carried in their stores from 40,000 to 2,500, replaced many of their private-label brands with lower-cost manufacturers to raise Radio Shack profit margins, and replaced Radio Shack’s handful of large stores with many “little holes in the wall,” large numbers of rented locations which were easier to close and re-open elsewhere if one location didn’t work out.

Tandy also sought to “identify the 20% that represents 80% of the sales,” and target their business and products to meet the needs of this target market. “We’re not looking for the guy who wants to spend his entire paycheck on a sound system,” Charles D. Tandy said in a 2015 article in the Financial Post. “Instead, [we’re] seeking customers looking to save money by buying cheaper goods and improving them through modifications and accessorizing,” making [Radio Shack] common among “nerds” and “kids aiming to excel at their science fairs.”

This strategy on the heels of an explosive time in the consumer electronics industry put RadioShack, as it was now branded, on the consumer front lines for the latest products and technologies and fueled the Company’s expansion to roughly 7,500 stores across North America at its peak at the turn of the century.

Yet the Company, with a business built around bringing to market the latest and greatest in technology, failed to prepare for its own obsolescence. A high concentration of stores that cannibalized sales for franchisees, online competition, management problems, and product concentration in a diverging marketplace based on technology standards, placed the Company, once again, in a vulnerable position. By 2015, RadioShack was forced to declare bankruptcy.