RadioShack to close stores, Santa Paula
location not on list of potential closures
February 18, 2015
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Santa Paula’s RadioShack will continue to be an electronic geek’s paradise after the West Harvard Boulevard branch was not listed among the more than 1,000 stores across the nation that potentially will close their doors.
But there are five RadioShack stores in Ventura County that showed up on a list published the day after the consumer electronics chain filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection February 5, including one each in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark. If they do close it will leave six RadioShack stores in Ventura County, including the Santa Paula location.
Fort Worth, Texas-based RadioShack, founded nearly a century ago, plans to sell 1,500 to 2,400 stores to its largest shareholder, investment firm Standard General and close the remainder of its 4,000 United States stores.
Wireless carrier Sprint Corp. has a deal with Standard General to open mini-shops in as many as 1,750 of the RadioShack stores Standard General is buying. Sprint would take a portion of space in each RadioShack store, and the carrier would sell mobile devices and Sprint plans, a move meant to capture the wide mobile device market now served by RadioShack.
With the conversion Sprint would become the primary brand on those RadioShack storefronts and in advertising.
But during the bankruptcy process other companies could bid for RadioShack stores.
RadioShack’s heyday was the 1980s; it introduced one of the first mass-market personal computers and used to be an almost exclusive source for home electronics of all types. But what it had spawned, the computer, also contributed to its downfall as shoppers increasingly moved online to find better deals. RadioShack had struggled through years of losses before filing for bankruptcy.
Now, there are 1,784 US RadioShack locations slated for possible closure listed on its website.
Told that although five RadioShacks will potentially close in Santa Ana and one in Santa Rosa but the list skipped over Santa Paula, one local shopper expressed relief.
“I would hate to lose RadioShack,” said Rick Lassen of Fillmore, who was shopping at the Santa Paula store on a recent afternoon. “It really specializes in a lot of the electronics stuff that when you need it, you need it right now, like batteries! I sure hope this store stays open... “
