Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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and logo for only six months, as the bankruptcy terms stipulated that those rights were to be sold in a court auc- tion that had been set for as early as mid-May. "Standard General has not officially acquired the RadioShack brand, but hopes an agreement will be reached soon," Sloat said ahead of that deadline. "Regardless of the branding we remain optimistic about the store- within-a-store model." The Sprint–Ra- dioShack stores made their debut in April, but building out the store-within- a-store model, hiring the staff, market- ing the locations and finishing up all the branding will take until the second half of 2015, says Sloat. For RadioShack, another priority will be revamping the merchandise mix. General Wireless has said that it plans to reduce the number of individual items carried in the stores by at least half, to start, and potentially by up to three- fourths, of what existed previously. The retailer will continue to focus on conve- nience items such as cables and batteries but will eliminate the big-ticket items, like laptops and big-screen TVs. RadioShack will de-emphasize cer- tain large markets, such as New York City, to operate in places with popula- tions of fewer than 100,000. The chain will combine that with a new focus on stores at community and neighborhood centers instead of costlier mall locations. Skeptics remain, however. Sprint is taking a calculated risk that these stores will produce incrementally more sales volume, says analyst David Marcotte, Kantar Retail's senior vice president of retail insights for the Americas. "I don't think Sprint is interested in taking on any more stores, and after a year or so, they are likely to offload a number of them based on performance," he said. Over the years the chain came to rely on the strength of its convenience as a retail presence, but that distinction eroded in the face of all the new com- petitive pressures, according to retail consultant Jeff Green, who heads an eponymous firm in Phoenix. Additional difficulties arose from a marketplace that makes electronics and accessories easily available at many types of retail outlets: Best Buy, CVS, Office- Max and Walmart among them. One of the biggest challenges for RadioShack is branding, according to Green: "Who are they? How are they different, and how are they going to communicate that to the consumer? The electronics sector is competitive and continues to get more competi- tive, which makes branding that much more important." S C T 14 S C T / J u n e 2 0 1 5 r e T a i l i n g T o d a y