Ask Americans under the age of 30 what they buy at “The Shack”, and you will be greeted with a blank look. For today’s younger consumers the brand isn’t associated with anything they need. The firm may have been one of the first retailers to sell mobile phones (back in the 1980s, naturally) and it may have sold 73m since then. But today’s consumers mostly buy their phones directly from the wireless carriers—or head for the Apple Store. On a recent evening in one of the Washington, DC, metro area’s biggest malls, the Apple Store was packed; RadioShack was deserted. This is bad news for a company that relies on mobile phones, computing tablets and related gadgets for around half its dwindling sales
