[Coco] More poor news for Radio Shack

[John Guin]

Time did an article on JC Penney, Target and Best Buy adopting the "boutique within a store" : http://business.time.com/2013/04/08/can-the-boutique-store-within-a-store-concept-save-big-box-retailers-from-extinction/

I could not find the Forrester data on the economics here (and would not want to pay anyway) but did find this research paper from Wharton that covers the economic model: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/kinshuk/cvdocs/JZ_SnS.pdf after reading this gentler intro: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-economic-incentives-of-the-store-within-a-store-retail-model/

Long story short: RS needs more room in stores to do this.  But I would visit a Sparkfun or Adafruit stand up display at least once per week if they did something like that.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Bill Loguidice
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2014 11:25 AM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] More poor news for Radio Shack

RadioShack could look to the niche "comic book" store model and devote a portion of their retail space to hosting weekly Maker-style events.
Unfortunately, among many other liabilities, Radio Shack stores are generally rather small and space is already at a premium. Frankly, the only advantage I can think of RadioShack having these days is their dwindling, but still impressive number of locations. Regardless, it's difficult to think of what they can do or what products they can carry that would leverage their one real strength that another retailer offline or online couldn't do better.

Their situation is not all that surprising though as even Best Buy was at this type of crossroads a few years back, and they recovered by basically creating stores-within-a-store and subletting their locations to the likes of Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, etc. Best Buy though had the advantage of large stores to work with, which again, RadioShack doesn't.

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