The official store count remained at 7,000+ for years—at least through 2004, when the company published the final edition of its catalog. Then the dwindling began, to the current count of 4,000 stores.
RadioShack’s sheer pervasiveness was what made it a success for so long. Then it became an albatross. The company literally had more stores than it knew what to do with, and too many of them were in locations that made more sense in the 1970s and 1980s than in the 21st century. They were too cramped to sell big-screen TVs or stock a full range of PCs, which cut the stores out of some of the hottest product categories.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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