Strange way Radio Shack may be coming back

A group that first ran a RadioShack franchise down in El Salvador in 1998 has become the major stakeholder in the business after Unicomer Group acquired its intellectual property and domains in about 70 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Europe and China.

What's next?

Unicomer has taken charge from Retail Ecommerce Ventures, which acquired RadioShack’s IP in late 2020 and last year licensed RadioShack Swap as the platform for a potential cryptocurrency venture.

That’s a separate company from RadioShack and right now we’re not sure if REV still has skin in the game with the original, legacy brand.

Confused? Well you might still be after this latest edition of RadioShack.

What once was?

RadioShack was once a consumer electronics staple of U.S. retail for anyone who needed a component or an accessory and at its peak it boasted had more than 5,000 locations across the country.

Along came Amazon, with sharper prices and speedy home delivery, hitting the chain's key selling points of range and accessibility.

Add in that new technology became less and less suitable for repairs and we started thinking disposable, and the chain began to experience a slow and painful death, ending in two Chapter 11 filings in 2015 and 2017.

Numerous attempts to save the brand had been made, including an ill-fated The Shack rebrand, while some independently owned locations continue to operate in the U.S.

Retail Ecommerce Ventures, which has spent the past several years acquiring the rights to a small roster of well-known retail-chain names, including Dress Barn, Pier 1, Stein Mart, Modell’s Sporting Goods, and Linens ’n Things, with a promise to “transform well-known undervalued retail brands into e-commerce success stories”.

REV also invested $35 million in off-price retailer Tuesday Morning and earlier this year it sold that to Hilco for $32 million as part of Tuesday Morning’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In July, the retailer converted to Chapter 7 and liquidated.

In May of this year, REV also owned RadioShack but then along came Unicomer, which, in 2015, had acquired RadioShack’s brands, intellectual property and existing franchise agreements for Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

Unicomer says that it intends to push forward with RadioShack in the U.S., and Rudy Siman, director and vice president of franchises of Unicomer Group, said in a statement that the company has already “led a successful expansion strategy for the brand.”

“This acquisition will allow us to start another phase of growth and innovation in the shopping experience with the latest technology,” Siman added.

“We have consolidated the franchise we have been operating for 25 years and through which we have generated thousands of employment opportunities in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.”

The Legacy

RadioShack remains a popular brand among most Americans over the age of 30 and in the same way that another comeback kid – Toys 'R' Us – has capitalized on that nostalgia and legacy, so RadioShack’s new owners seem to want to leverage that.

But beyond expressing confidence in their track record outside the U.S., they are not sharing much detail on what to expect next.

As the company does operate brick-and-mortar RadioShack locations in many countries, a return to physical stores certainly can' t be discounted, albeit that it has not revealed whether it plans to expand its store estate to the U.S.

Radio Shack may be back!