When Good Brands Go Bad, Part II

Hot on the heels of Blue Cross changing their name to Medavie, Radio Shack, here in Canada, is changing their name to “The Source by Circuit City.” Details, such as they are, at radioshack.ca.

I don’t care how much the sub-licensing fees from Radio Shack in the U.S. were, this doesn’t make any sense at all to me, as Radio Shack has one of the strongest, most identifiable brands in the country, and the one most closely associated with its products niche. Somehow I can’t imagine saying “I’m just going to go down to The Source by Circuit City to buy a capacitor.”

The new website is at TheSourceCC.com, which is an equally dismal URL.

Here’s some coverage of the insane change:

Comments

Ken Williams's picture
Ken Williams on May 26, 2005 - 13:16 Permalink

The Radio Shack catalogue fuelled my interest in electronics when I was 12. The array of resistors, capacitors, IC’s, soldering irons were fascinating and laid out a small map of the world of electronics.

When dad got me the crystal radio kit for my birthday, I was beyond happy. My bedroom window at our house had a copper wire that stretched about 40 feet to the garage, about ten feet higher than the clothesline.
The previous owner had left this antenna, and when I connected it to my crytal radio it worked beautifully.
No batteries, just driven by the radio signal power.

Anyway, I’m very nostalgic about Radio Shack, or would be if they heven’t consistently dissapointed me throughout my life by turning from a specialty parts store into a crass gadget store. Along the way I realized the $6 pack of 5 resistors could be bought for 15 cents each from JDR, or even from EBAY.

They still sell the 200-in-1 Electronic Project Kit but the magic for me is definitely long gone.
-
Finally, one more stupid thing about the old
RadioShack.ca site is you can’t actually click thru to the new brand URL.
Some marketing genius wants to force one to type it in manually as a means of increasing comprehension of the new brand name. Marketing killed the radio store.

Pete Prodoehl's picture
Pete Prodoehl on May 27, 2005 - 15:18 Permalink

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Radio Shack, but at least I could always depend on them to be there, with the same name… Until now… Is this some crazy Canadian thing? ;)

Terrill's picture
Terrill on June 24, 2005 - 21:35 Permalink

I go wild in Radio shack. And the help are grand..talk faster than you can think. And when you leave the store, you have paid more than their sale catalogue price nearly every time. Beware, customers>