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RadioShack reinvents itself as a crypto platform with wild tweets
- boboche 4y agoRemember before the internet, those little electronic pocket books with hand-written diagrams and whatnot? Good times.
- asguy 4y agoYah, Forrest Mims' books were a massive part of my childhood.
- blisterpeanuts 4y agoSure do. I loved going to Radio Shack, as a kid. I still have a few screwdrivers and whatnot, purchased there with allowance money. If they were still around, I’d be still shopping there. Microcenter is not bad, and of course ebay/amzn/newegg. Still there was a kind of charm about an old RS store, with the junky stereo equipment and made-in-Taiwan-or-wherever-was-cheapest toolsets and the guys behind the counter wearing ties. A lost era.
- bombcar 4y agoThere are a few RadioShack left, though the one near me still has the parts cabinets from years ago, most of the store is bicycles, tobacco, and cell phones now.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoNo vapes? Seems like a good crossover market for DIY inhalers (or whatever vape machines are called), especially if they're already comfortable selling tobacco.
- bombcar 4y agoProbably - I don’t partake so I don’t really pay attention.
- felipemnoa 4y agoI owned a couple of them. Unfortunately useless for understanding electronics. It is not their fault, they were no substitute for an electronics class.
- api 4y agoThis isn't Radio Shack. It's a corporate husk that was purchased for the name and is now be used to run a crypto pump and dump.
- FooBarBizBazz 4y agoIt's obviously modeled off GME. "Hey, let's buy a nostalgic company from the 80s/90s..."
- SkyMarshal 4y agoLooks like they were purchased by Tai Lopez’s PE firm and pivoted to crypto (exchange + token) + edgy tweets at the height of the bubble. RIP Radio Shack.
- nijave 4y ago>private equity firm Retail Ecommerce Ventures (REV) purchased it in 2020
- ntoskrnl 4y agoIs it public how much they paid? I couldn't find any info besides this https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201119005153/en/Retail-Ecommerce-Ventures-REV-Acquires-RadioShack-Brands https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201119005153/en/Ret...
- sokoloff 4y agoThis interview of Tai by Lady Ada made me wish the previously beloved brand would just be allowed to die quietly. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8wwBIA8wMw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8wwBIA8wMw That was a stepping stone along the path to the crazy tweets: https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3423441/to-the-surprise-of-everyone-radioshacks-twitter-was-not-hacked-theyre-just-a-crypto-company-now-that-tweets-wild-things https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3423441/to-the-surprise-...
- SkyMarshal 4y agohttps://archive.ph/I8zLJ https://archive.ph/I8zLJ
- somedude895 4y ago> “It’s our voice, a new voice, one for the people,” said Abel Czupor, the chief marketing officer. “RadioShack’s audience used to be only an older demographic, but as times have changed and e-commerce has taken over, the old voice of RadioShack is no longer relevant.” Everything about this quote makes me want to throw up.
- mirntyfirty 4y agoIt seems as though every product, service, media, or scam is now an “empowering community”
- MattGaiser 4y agoCan get you a cult following willing to pay more.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- imglorp 4y agoSeems like it's all -- and only -- about brand and image. Nothing about value or risk or profit. Who buys an investment on brand alone? > we continue to see robust interest among gaming-token start-ups, in particular. They understand that the RadioShack brand is congruent with their own play,”
- scifibestfi 4y agoIt sounds like they hired a 19 year old Twitter influencer to be their Chief Marketing Officer.
- heretogetout 4y agoTo me it sounds like a 70 year old talking the way they think 19 year olds talk.
- googlryas 4y agoYou know what's even more impressive than owning radio shack? All my books....
- djbusby 4y agoWish the Shack had gone all in on the Maker stuff. I miss the old days (90s) when I could buy small quantities of components. Now I'm stuck buying the 1000 pack of 1/4W resistors in all the Ohms, and so many other things. But they come back on Crypto? Now!? Tell me your business is dead w/o saying "we're dead".
- inkeddeveloper 4y agoOur local RadioShack doubled down on the maker components. I go buy things from them weekly just to show they have community support. I really hope they don’t close.
- the_only_law 4y agoDespite the statements at the start of the article, I remember at least the tail end of RadioShack and that still existed near me when I first got into electronics. Nowadays, a lot of my project ideas die because I need some part, that I have to order and wait for shipping and by the time that happens, I've lost motivation or my mind has engaged another idea. It would be really nice to have a RadioShack or microcenter to at least pick up basic stuff, but ofc the former is basically dead and the latter has 0 presence the third largest US economy somehow.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoGoing to guess your local RadioShack is one of the handful of independent RadioShack dealers left. It would be a shame if they ended up dropping the RadioShack brand because the current owners of the brand find being profane as a good way of getting attention.
- platz 4y agosparkfun and adafruit filled their niche
- vic-traill 4y agoBattery of the Month Club for the win! Or was that just a Canadian thing?
- Fargoan 4y agoIt's a scam ran by the guy with books in his garage
- newobj 4y agoWow. Hedge fund bros run a meme company. Real cool. (Eyes roll up into skull)
- tmaly 4y agoI wish they would return to the electronics, corner the maker niche.
- bequanna 4y agoI think they tried but the overhead of physical stores and inventory was just too much to serve that small-ish market.
- HillRat 4y agoThere’s no Radio Shack left to execute on any strategy, unfortunately; REV bought the brand, and just the brand (along with many others), and is busy burning residual goodwill in order to shill whatever crypto nonsense they’re pushing.
- simonsarris 4y agoReminiscent of when Long Island Iced Tea rebranded themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp
- reiichiroh 4y agoThis is run by Internet fake guru Tai Lopez who is known for the “here in my garage” viral video.
- sergiomattei 4y agoGuess he’s not fake anymore if he owns a huge PE firm.
- floatinglotus 4y agoSo it’s a meme-Ponzi-scheme-crypto-rugpull? What makes it different from all of the other ones?
- bradneuberg 4y agoReally sad to see RadioShack reduced to this. Grew up on a Tandy Color Computer. Hate seeing RadioShacks Twitter account being dragged through the mud by a foul mouthed crypto scammer intern.
- mst 4y agoI believe jwz coined the term "brand necrophilia" for such things.