In the Beginning There Was a Radio Shack

In The beginning there Was A Radio Shack

RadioShack begins in 1919 in Fort Worth, where two friends, Norton Hinckley and Dave L. Tandy met. During there visit the decided to pool their resources and go into business together. Their store, which they named the Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company, sold leather shoe parts to shoe repair shops in the Fort Worth area.

Two years later, two brothers, Theodore and Milton Deutschmann, opened a one-store retail and mail-order operation downtown Boston. They chose the name, "RadioShack," which was a term for the small, wooden structure that housed a ship's radio equipment. The Deutschmanns thought the name was appropriate for a store that would supply the needs of radio officers aboard ships, as well as "ham" radio operators.

Beginning in 1921, RadioShack would grow to a handful of stores clustered in the Northeast, and become a leading electronics mail-order distributor to hobbyists. This is how it would remain until the company and a young Texan named Charles Tandy crossed paths four decades later.

The Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company grew modestly through the years. Although the company survived the Great Depression, it was nearly crippled when World War II began in 1941. Shoes were rationed two pairs per adult per year.

Mr. Tandy's oldest son, Charles D. Tandy, while serving in the Navy during the war, observed how leathercraft was used as a therapeutic tool for patients in military hospitals and by servicemen in recreation and rehabilitation centers. He told his father that leathercraft was the way to steer the company during the war years and to prepare for what he believed would be a healthy, new, post-war hobby market.

RadioShack continued to do well. It issued its first catalog in the early 1940s. In 1947, the company entered the growing high-fidelity market and opened the nation's first audio showroom that provided comparisons of speakers, amplifiers, turntables and phonograph cartridges. In 1954, RadioShack began selling its own private-label product line with the Realistic brand name.

By the early 1960s, RadioShack had expanded to nine retail stores and was a leading distributor of electronic parts and products to do-it-yourselfers around the world.

However, the company soon fell on hard times due to poor operating practices, coupled with a disastrous credit offering to its customers.

Charles Tandy, who had become intrigued with consumer electronics, saw the small RadioShack chain as an excellent opportunity for rapid growth. He bought the essentially bankrupt company in 1963 for the equivalent of $300,000 cash, and embarked on a plan that turned it into one of the great success stories of American retailing. Since then, RadioShack has grown to a nationwide network of retail stores, and its net sales and operating revenues have ballooned to $4.6 billion.

In 1975, Tandy Corporation became exclusively an electronics company after it spun off all other operations into Tandycrafts and Tandy Brands. In 1986, the company spun off its foreign retail operations into InterTAN, Inc.

The '70s was the pivotal point for RadioShack. It was a time of incredible growth, not only in the number of stores that were opened, but in the quantity, quality and sophistication of the products available at the company's stores and dealers.

Following on the heels of the phenomenal popularity of citizen-band (CB) radios, the company had another instant hit.

In 1977, RadioShack