Radio Shack

RadioShack Corp. recently announced that it is forthwith to be known as The Shack and launched a campaign to get consumers used to the new image. "We're contemporizing the way we want people to think about our brand," Lee Applbaum, RadioShack's chief marketing officer, said of last week's announcement. Companies rename themselves for a variety of reasons. William Lozito, president of Minneapolis-based brand-naming company Strategic Name Development Inc., calls RadioShack's move a "name-ectomy" and compares it to Pizza Hut's decision in June to call itself The Hut. The shortening is a nod to the abbreviated, text-message-driven nature of youth culture, Lozito said.

One of my many undistinguished postings was a summer job as an assistant manager of a Radio Shack (then spelled as two words) in a strip mall in Rock Springs, Wyo. Dante couldn't think of a better description of hell. This was in 1982, and Radio Shack was actually a pretty happening electronics retailer, selling cordless phones, turntables, circuit boards, resistors and a magical something called a TRS-80 Color Computer, with which one could glimpse the future's horizons in a game called Starfire.

Directors of RadioShack Corp. said they stood behind the retailer's chief executive despite a published report that he didn't earn two college degrees listed on his resume. A biography of David J. Edmondson given to reporters and posted on the company's website said that he earned degrees in theology and psychology from Pacific Coast Baptist College in California.

The board of RadioShack Corp. said it had hired a lawyer to investigate admissions by Chief Executive David Edmondson that he had lied about his academic record. The company's statement, released late Wednesday -- along with newspaper reports that Edmondson had been involved in several alcohol-related driving incidents -- left analysts and legal experts wondering whether he could survive in his position.

Electronics retailer RadioShack Corp. said fourth-quarter earnings dropped 62%, and it announced plans to close 400 to 700 stores and two distribution centers as part of a plan to improve its financial performance. Its shares tumbled 8%. The Fort Worth-based company said it could not project the exact number of job cuts until it identified all affected stores. RadioShack said stores it planned to close were company-operated.

RadioShack Corp.'s beleaguered president and chief executive, David Edmondson, resigned Monday after questions about his resume's accuracy. The Fort Worth-based electronics retailer said its board accepted his resignation and had promoted Claire Babrowski, executive vice president and chief operating officer, to acting CEO. Leonard Roberts, RadioShack's chairman and Edmondson's predecessor as CEO, said the move was necessary to restore the company's credibility.

RadioShack Corp. named Julian Day chief executive in the hope that the man who pulled Kmart out of bankruptcy proceedings can revive the struggling electronics retailer, which is being squeezed by Best Buy Co. and Circuit City Stores Inc. "He will have his work cut out for him," said Ulysses Yannas, a broker with Buckman, Buckman & Reid who has tracked the retail industry for nearly 30 years. Shares of Fort Worth-based RadioShack rose $3.20, or 23%, to $16.96.

RadioShack Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Claire Babrowski will leave the company at the end of the month after failing to win the top job at the third-biggest U.S. electronics retailer. Babrowski, who came to RadioShack from McDonald's Corp. in July 2005, was acting chief executive before turnaround specialist Julian Day was hired last month. The Fort Worth-based company ousted previous CEO David Edmondson in February for lying on his resume.

You've got mail -- but no job. That was essentially the e-mail RadioShack Corp. sent to 403 employees Tuesday to notify them they had been fired as part of a company downsizing. RadioShack spokesman Charles Hodges said the company had notified employees in the last 10 days that they would learn of their fates through an e-mail. At 8:45 a.m. -- the designated time -- employees were glued to their computer screens at the company's headquarters in Fort Worth.

RadioShack Corp., the No. 3 U.S. electronics chain, said fourth-quarter earnings rose 2.8%, the least in two years, on higher costs. The company cut its annual profit forecast, sending its shares down 10%. Net income fell short of analysts' estimates, increasing to $130.9 million, or 81 cents a share, from $127.3 million, or 77 cents, a year earlier. Sales climbed 7% to $1.59 billion, the Fort Worth-based retailer said. Shares of RadioShack fell $3.44 to $29.93 on the New York Stock Exchange.