“The ability to create a broad portfolio for them is something that we bring to the table, he said.

Garriques and his company’s background in electronics - he is a former president of Motorola Personal Communications, and former Global Consumer Group president at Dell who began his career at Bell Labs - should help with that expansion. “We want to expand it to anything consumer electronics, home, the phone business, home security. “We’re interested in potentially having Radio Shack laptops, having our own flat screen TVs,” he said. Lopez agrees that Radio Shack has a lot of room to grow into many new product areas. He sees the potential for Radio Shack, with an updated e-commerce presence, to aspire to become the Wayfair W of electronics. “I’m hoping that they’re going to make it a broad consumer electronics portal and platform, where not only do they sell the myriad Radio Shack brands but they also are a go-to place for many other electronic brands as well,” he said.

“I truly believe they’re going to do great things with it,” he said. The investors want to retain a stake in the brand, Garriques said, because of the growth potential given REV’s e-commerce track record. Ron Garriques, CEO of VEYEP Holdings LLC, which headed the investment group that owned Radio Shack, said the owners liked REV’s plans for boosting Radio Shack’s online performance. While REV typically prefers to have 100% ownership, the minority partnership in this case made sense, Lopez said, because the current owners have knowledge of the electronics industry and electronics sourcing, and deep relationships with manufacturers.

Transistor radios at radio shack