Despite claims that this past Christmas season was good for the nation’s retail sector, RadioShack, another longtime national retailer, is revealing financial woes and announcing the closing of over 1,000 stores.
Breitbart reported in February that a tsunami of store closings would be hitting the US retail sector in 2014, partly because of disappointing sales but also because of a changing retail environment. Tech retailer RadioShack is to be one of those companies contracting instead of growing.
RadioShack has been struggling for several years to make business sense of the new tech age, but this last Christmas season was a final straw. The company reported a loss of $191.4 million for last year’s fourth quarter and a $400 million loss for the year. In comparison, the company only lost $139 million in 2012.
In an effort to save its brand, the company hired former Walgreen chief Joseph C. Magnacca to turn the company around.
“Since I joined the company, it has been clear we need to change the conversation about RadioShack,” Magnacca said during a conference call.
The first move to recovery is to retrench and close 1,200 outlets across the country, about twenty percent of its stores.
RadioShack was hopeful after its 2014 Super Bowl commercial became a favorite of many potential customers. The commercial was a self-deprecating affair featuring such characters from 1980s pop culture as the evil Chucky Doll and alien puppet Alf ransacking a RadioShack store, the theme being “the 80s called, and we want our store back.”
This move brings RadioShack down to 4,100 stores. This puts the chain below retailers AutoZone, at 4,836 stores, and CVS Caremark, which has 7,660.