“Our friends call us The Shack”. So claims the newly rebranded RadioShack in an attempt to be down with the kids. It’s almost embarrassing, like seeing your grandfather listening to an iPod and riding a single speed track bike. Wait, that actually would be cool.
The rebranding is part of a big Netogether promo (giant laptops and webcams. Sounds like fun) for the company and strikes us as being on a level with the recent Pizza Hut scheme, which renamed itself as The Hut (eat there and you’ll end up looking like Jabba). Sure, the store probably doesn’t sell as many radios as it did back in 1921, but a name is more than a description of a company, right?
Back at the beginning, brothers Theodore and Milton Deutschmann chose the name for their first downtown Boston store because it referred to the big wooden boxes that contained a ship’s radio kit, and that’s what they were selling. If the retailer was that honest today, perhaps the chain should be called JunkShack?
Still, it’s better than the fate of Tandy, the UK version of RadioShack. The stores disappeared and even the url redirects to some shabby-looking online shop called “UK Stores”. What a way to go.
The Shack Summer Netogether [RadioShack]
Photo: Caveman 92223/Flickr
