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:
About This Blog
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
To learn more about me, read my /now, look at my bio, listen to audio I’ve posted, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way).
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of posts, an RSS feed of comments, or a podcast RSS feed that just contains audio posts. You can also receive a daily digests of posts by email.
Comments
The Radio Shack catalogue
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.
I’ve always had a love/hate
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? ;)
I go wild in Radio shack. And
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>
Add new comment