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Radio Shack / TRS-80 Branded Clothing

Are these new shirts or have Radio Shack's new owners finally gotten around to clearing out the warehouses? I know that when the local stores went bust, there were cases of shirts with older logos being sold at about a dollar each. Based on the dust, those shirts must have been stored for at least several years.
 
Cool!
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Mike
 
So... Radio Shack is back as an online retailer? Is this for Christmas season only, or are they going to go for it?

smp
 
Online and with a small number of retail stores, primarily as a secondary store brand for HobbyTown. The overall product mix seems to be old Radio Shack stock coupled with new nostalgia items to capitalize on the recent TV appearances. Once Young Sheldon tanks, all the Radio Shack Express stores will disappear.
 
Radio Shack claims to have over 450 independently owned stores and RadioShack Express locations. A far cry from the thousands of stores they used to have, but more than most people probably expect.

Anyone can get T-shirts like that printed to order, and for General Wireless, it's a cheap way to cash in on the intellectual property of all the Radio Shack brand names and logos they own the rights to. They also have a Twitter account (@RadioShack) on which they regularly post clippings from old catalogs.
 
You know what stinks, there are no electronic stores anywhere near me to buy components and such from anymore. At least I could order stuff and have it shipped to the local RS store, now I have no options but online shopping and most stuff from china.
 
I think now would be a good time to open a small electronics store in many areas. I know there are RS franchises left, but I'd like to know if you can still open one as a real store, not part of an Ace or Hobby Town? It appears you only need $150K and a net worth of $250K, but I'm not sure if that's old info from before their bankruptcy.

RS caused their own demise with having stores within 5 to 10 minutes of each other. I can think back to 17 stores within 30 minutes of my house...some within 2 miles of each other. Was it to keep shareholders happy?
If they would allow an owner to have control over what's being sold and allow stock from outside sources, it could do very well.
I can see opening a store modeled after a 1970 RS; plenty of electronic components, arduino kits, raspberry pi, educational project kits for kids, OTA and FTA parts. Offer tools and equipment for beginners to experts...sell soldering stations from Hakko to off brand Chinese units that actually work well enough for a hobbyist.
Don't ask obscene prices and keep cell phone garbage out.
I can even picture having a little just for fun museum section with functioning vintage RS stereos, computers, handheld games etc. that customers could actually play with.

You'd most likely have to open your own private store to have that kind of control, but having the RADIO SHACK name out front and being the only one for hundreds of miles would be a big benefit.
 
How many of the 450 are what we think of? What I mean is that the closest one I could find to here is nothing more than a Radio Shack branded cell phone shop.

I wish I had the time. I think I could on-the-side fill a hole that Radio Shack left. A retail place that carries Raspberry Pi and all the necessities, and cables. AV cables, networking stuff, antenna stuff, etc. I'm tired of resorting to Amazon to get these things in a reasonable amount of time, and I can't be the only one. Sure, you can buy Pi's at Target, and an audio cable at Best buy. But what about an adequate power supply and a composite video cable (TRRS)? Or simply some female RCA-RCA adaptors? A MIDI cable? I'm not even sure if Interstate Music (very close to here) has them.
 
KC9UDX said:
the closest one I could find to here is nothing more than a Radio Shack branded cell phone shop.
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Sadly thats what became of all the RS stores in my region as well. If I went there to buy wire, or a universal AC adapter, they would try and cell me a cell phone.. IT was pathetic... In a way I am glad they died.. But I wish there were actual hobby electronic shops around. We have one,but its an hour and 45 mins drive from where I live.
 
For the last couple years of the ones we had in my area (there were five within a 10 mile radius, I think), they had all converted half the store into cell phones, but at least the other half was still conventional Radio Shack. This one that's in business now is *only* cell phones.
 
I will be receiving more Tandy gear, probably in the spring(warmer weather) along with said gear are 8 new(never powered on) Model 2000. Some with HDD and some without On top of that I could almost open up a RS store myself with what I have now. I will be letting this group know when this gear arrives, I just don't know when, because the person I am getting it from has to clear out and move soon. As I stated in previous post's I inherited a good size Horde of Tandy equipment.
 
I'd go for a Radio Shack branded shirt if they were not so goddamn generic. They reek of cheap silkscreening and previews straight from redbubble where you can overlay any graphic on a stock image of a shirt or person wearing said shirt.
Also that's USD. Who is paying $20something USD for a cheap shirt?
 
NeXT said:
I'd go for a Radio Shack branded shirt if they were not so goddamn generic. They reek of cheap silkscreening and previews straight from redbubble where you can overlay any graphic on a stock image of a shirt or person wearing said shirt.
Also that's USD. Who is paying $20something USD for a cheap shirt?
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Well if it had say "Armani express" Silk screened on said cheapo T-Shirt, I know a bunch of yuppies who would pay upwards of $80.00 .... for a T Shirt. Crazy Eddies used to give T-shirts away for Free!! In fact, everyone used to. T-shirts were like Pennies...
 
An interesting thought is that do they even have the rights to sell these? RS sold their computer business to AST back in the 1990s which I’m pretty sure included all intellectual property.
 
pski said:
An interesting thought is that do they even have the rights to sell these? RS sold their computer business to AST back in the 1990s which I’m pretty sure included all intellectual property.
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I think AST only bought the intellectual property that was still relevant at the time.

When RadioShack (f/k/a Tandy) went bankrupt in 2015, they listed lots of old copyrights like Raaka-Tu as among their assets. See the Schedule of Assets and Liabilities.

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U.S. copyrights notoriously last essentially forever (theoretically limited to 95 years, but for many decades congress has been extending the limit anytime any copyrights are about to expire) and require no maintenance, but trademarks are use-it-or-lose-it. All the TRS-80 trademarks were long ago abandoned. The bankruptcy filing had this note about Science Fair (which I believe was only mentioned at all because it had been used more recently than TRS-80):


Trademark: SCIENCE FAIR; Appl. No.: 72274089; Filing Date: 16/06/67; Reg. No.: 905792; Reg. Date: 12/01/71; Jurisdiction: United States of America; This registration will be canceled in due course by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as supporting affidavits for the maintenance of the registrations have not been filed by TRS Quality, Inc., Tandy Corporation or RadioShack Corporation, as applicable, to maintain the registrations. Those marks are no longer in use and should be considered dead.​
 
just bought a white and black trs-80 shirt....sans computer picture - BTW thanks for sharing the link (-:

steve
 
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