Joe Magnacca, ceo of RadioShack Corp. (Fort Worth, Texas), made it clear that the consumer electronics retailer is not for sale.
“I’m not exactly the cost-cutting guy coming in here,” Magnacca told The Dallas Morning News. “That doesn’t mean we don’t want to finance what we’re doing effectively. But we want to look forward, not backwards.”
Magnacca said all 4400 stores in the chain will be reorganized in October to capture some of the changes in time for the holiday shopping season. “That will be done at a minimal expense and is already in the budget,” he said.
Magnacca, formerly president of the New York drugstore chain Duane Reade, was hired to turn around the company in February 2013, after RadioShack posted an annual loss for 2012, its first in recent history. He brought with him, from Duane Reade, Michael DeFazio as senior vp for store concepts.
In the New York store, described by the Morning News as “filled with interactive displays and organized in new ways to make it easier to shop,” Magnacca said he’s going after younger customers who “don’t even know who we are,” and he’s narrowed the merchandise mix. By cutting back on landline phones and digital TV antennas, he’s freeing up funds and shelf space for new technology such as the Fitbit daily activity tracking devices.
Last week, speculation that the company was working with financial advisers to help it shore up its balance sheet took the stock down.
“There have been so many rumors about us lately,” Magnacca said. “We’ve been working with AlixPartners for almost two years, to help with our logistics. We need to be in stock. We need to supply our franchisees, here and overseas. We’re opening inside college bookstores. We want to expand our Mexico business. We have decisions about where to invest our money. I won’t spend more than we have budgeted, but we may need to spend it differently than in the past.” he said.
In May, the company announced an agreement with the National Association of College Stores to install RadioShack-branded fixtures in its campus bookstores.