Electronics retail
For half a century, buying electronics meant walking into a store and asking someone. These chains were built on that conversation, and lost it to big boxes, carriers and the internet.
Post-mortems in Electronics retail
RadioShack
1921 – 2015
Ghost
Technology shift
5,289 company stores at the 2001 peak
Once a store within a short drive of almost every American. It kept the stores long after the reason to visit them had moved online.
Circuit City
1949 – 2009
Ghost
Strategy and management
567 stores liquidated in early 2009
It invented the electronics superstore and spun off CarMax. Then it dropped appliances, fired its best-paid salespeople and met the 2008 credit crisis with no cushion.