Radioshack Bankrupt: Company to Sell Its Stores to Sprint, Standard General After 11 Straight Quarters of Losses
Radioshack will start selling up to 2,400 stores to Sprint and its lender and largest shareholder, Standard General. This is all part of Radioshack's bankruptcy protection, which the company filed for on Thursday.
According to Reuters, Standard General, which owns an affiliate called General Wireless, will operate the stores that Sprint does not purchase.
Radioshack has posted losses in 11 quarters consecutively and has tried to transform their stores into a place where shoppers could get mobile phones. Now, Sprint will operate inside the Radioshack stores selling their phones and Radioshack products, Sprint said in a statement.
Radioshack also reached a deal with liquidation firm Hilco to close underperforming stores.
In addition, Radioshack said potential buyers would be able to bid on Radioshack's assets during its bankruptcy.
"These steps are the culmination of a thorough process intended to drive maximum value for our stakeholders," RadioShack CEO Joe Magnacca said in the statement.
The decline of Radioshack can reportedly be attributed to its failure to adapt itself in the ever-changing digital world.
"It was too little too late," said Will Frohnhoefer, an equity research analyst at BTIG. "They had multiple years -- a decade of decline -- to try to reverse things, and they didn't seem to come up with a coordinated strategy until very late in the game."
Unlike most companies, Radioshack refused to sell their products online, and shoppers stayed away from their stores, according to NPR.
In 2014, the company tried one last time to prove they were cool by putting out a Super Bowl ad stating, "It's time for a new Radioshack." Still, people did not flock to Radioshack stores, mostly because the items offered there were not what they wanted. Radioshack was known more of a place where you got a spare part rather than somewhere you purchased a major electronic device, according to Washington Post.
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of latinpost.com