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From: jshelton@ads.com (John L. Shelton)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Allied Radio / Radio Shack
Message-ID: <16686@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 4 Feb 91 08:25:53 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 93, Message 3 of 10


 ... (Allied Radio was Radio Shack's name thirty years ago for you
young'uns reading this.)...

Not true.

Radio Shack was formed in 1920 (approx) in Boston, MA, and for years
had the one store on Commonwealth Ave.  They branched out into mail
order over the years.  In the 60's, Radio Shack was bought by the
Tandy Corporation, which at the time was doing mostly leather and
craft stuff.  Eventually, RS became the large portion of Tandy, and I
believe the craft business is almost completely gone.

Allied Radio is as old as RS, and was based in Chicago, as PAT should
well know.  Allied Radio was a mail order house only, doing both
commercial and residential electronics.  They sold brand-name hifi out
of the same catalog that listed GE transistors etc.  Allied also
eventually branched out to retail stores and had in the neighborhood
of a hundred or so when ... in the late 60's or early 70s, Tandy
bought Allied and tried to merge it with R/S.  For a few years, all
the stores were labelled "Allied Radio Shack".  The Justice Department
stepped in, deciding that this was a "Bad Idea", but by the time they
did so, Tandy had closed all but about 30 or so of the original Allied
stores.  Tandy took Allied to wholesale only, and eventually sold off
the Allied business, though for years Allied carried Radio Shack
parts.


=John=


[Moderator's Note: You are wrong on the 'Allied was mail order only'
statement. See the message before this. They did have a mail order
division but their big warehouse store on the west side of Chicago was
a beehive of activity for hams, CB'ers, and lots of other early radio
freaks for thirty years or more, circa 1930 through the mid-60's.
When they annouced that Tandy had bought them out (yes, Tandy was
originally into handicraft type projects, a sort of Heathkit for
people who liked basket weaving and knitting sweaters, etc) they had a
big sale and got rid of all *non Tandy* merchandise. They cleared out
all sorts of radio equipment from other companies and filled the
place with Tandy stock. Allied lost most of its loyal customers as a
result. Then came the Allied Radio Shacks, the final closure of the
west side warehouse store in Chicago, and the birth of the dozens
of much smaller (Tandy merchandise only!) Radio Shack stores across
Anerica. Say! Speaking of Heathkit ... what are *they* doing these
days? Are they still around?  My first terminal was a Zenith Z-19
which I built from a Heathkit in 1980, meaning it was actually an H-19
instead.  The last I heard, they closed the Benton Harbor facility.  PAT]