Radio Shack Selling Its Name Separately From Its Stores

(Phillip Pessar)

In a bankruptcy auction, creditors want to extract as much money as they can from the company’s remaining assets that have any value. Recognizing that “Radio Shack” is a brand that people at least recognize, the company’s lawyers announced today in court that its name and intellectual property will sell separately from the store leases.

Standard General, also Radio Shack’s biggest shareholder, is expected to bid on about half of the store leases, then operate the stores as co-branded ventures with Sprint. With the RadioShack name and intellectual property not necessarily attached to those store leases, it’s not clear whether the second brand of those stores will be RadioShack or something else. Maybe they will simply be Sprint stores with an extra shelf of batteries and a few toy drones.

One of RadioShack’s attorneys also told the bankruptcy court today that Spring Mobile, a chain of authorized AT&T Wireless resellers, is interested in the RadioShack leases that Standard General doesn’t purchase for its mysterious future RadioShack/Sprint venture. You may not recognize the name Spring Mobile, but that’s a brand that GameStop acquired in 2013, and is an important part of that company’s plans to stay relevant as consumers’ buying patterns for video games change.

Bidding for the RadioShack brand begins at $20 million. If they want to sell “The Shack,” the brand they tried to make catch on back in 2008 or so, separately, I’ll give ‘em twenty bucks for it.

RadioShack To Sell Name Separately With $20 Million Opening Bid [Bloomberg News]