Staples and RadioShack Closing Stores
Not very good news for us brick and mortar tech geeks looking to check out products first hand. Best Buy is keeping it’s head above water cutting costs and consolidating management positions to the tune of 1 billion dollars and it looks like Staples and RadioShack better start looking as well. Staples announced today that they will be closing 225 stores after having a terrible 4th quarter where sales fell 10.6% to 5.9 billion. The United States number one office supply company will be closing 15% of it’s 1500 stores in an attempt to cut costs.
In the same sinking boat as Staples RadioShack announced that it will be closing up to 1,100 stores that are under performing in the U.S. out of the nearly 5,200 stores they have here. Shares of RadioShack fell 17% yesterday in trading to $2.25. Revenue in the 4th quarter fell 20% and the Shack lost 191 million in the fourth quarter. RadioShack front man Joseph Magnacca told analysts: "We were trying to do too much too quickly" (to turn around the company). He also said the company cut some product lines "too deeply" and didn’t have enough in-demand products in stock.
Hopefully our brick and mortar tech stores can keep reinventing themselves to better fight off the Amazon attack which will not be easy.
Thanks Ram!
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Radio Shack I understand. They have been misguided for decades. But Staples is a well organized operation with easy to navigate stores.
But, as I noted last week, if their online store undercuts every Staples brick &mortar product by 10-15%, then we shouldn’t be surprised.
My dad worked for Radio Shack in the early 80s. I’m honestly surprised sometimes that they’re still around at all, so this does not surprise me, either.
Staples, well, yeah, if people are buying from them online then I suppose we should expect this. Still kind of sad.