Electronics retailer RadioShack filed for bankruptcy after 94 years in business, ultimately unable to keep up with consumers’ shift to the wireless and digital technologies of the internet age. Here is a timeline of RadioShack’s decline:
1962: Retailer establishes a 40-year period of peace and prosperity among electronics retailers known as the Pax Radioica
1980: As a joke, RadioShack employee asks customer buying game-TV switchbox for name and address. Practice lasts company-wide for another 22 years.
1995: Poor microcassette harvest devastates first-quarter sales
1996-2005: Company coasts by on purchase of single VGA cord from Fort Myers, FL location
1999: RadioShack CEO assures Americans that products will break down regardless of Y2K
2001: Company introduces cordless Howie Long
2005: Corporation celebrates one-millionth customer walking in, scoffing at cost, and walking out empty-handed
2007: Email leaks reveal RadioShack in serious talks to buy pack of AA batteries from Duracell
2008: Company loses lucrative Defense Department contract
2010: Executives hold press conference to address issue of what exactly is going on with that one aisle of just copper wire and cable splitters
2015: RadioShack management forced to euthanize millions of thumb drives they can no longer support
