Target will rent out retail space to Radio Shack for mobile phone sales
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | 5 Comments
Target will be starting mobile phone sales inside its stores. While most retail stores such as Target and Walmart and even Best Buy offer mobile phone sales, the way that Target is going to be selling mobile phones will be a bit different than others do.
Target will be outsourcing its mobile phone sales to Radio Shack. Because of this, Radio Shack will be opening up kiosks inside the store. Any consumer will be able to buy the same brands they can get other places. They will have T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless.
According to the article, you won’t be able to buy Sprint phones at the kiosks, but I can’t see that holding because Sprint has always been one of the main carriers that sold at Radio Shack stores.
This could be a good idea for smaller retailers; however Target is a pretty big store with a large retail footprint. Target has the ability to sell and the room to sell the phones and plans, but I suppose that they have felt as though this would be the best way to do it and would benefit everyone in the deal.
There wasn’t a lot of information released about the deal between Target and Radio Shack. However, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles, California said that Kiosk Operations (a subsidiary of Radio Shack that will be operating the kiosks inside the Target stores) is likely paying Target for the ability to operate In its stores. He said that it is likely for the company to pay between $30,000 and $40,000 per year for retail rent. It is likely that Kiosk Operations will also be paying Target a small amount of its sales, which is probably going to be less than 10 percent.
Source
The change in the way we rent movies is amazing
Tags: t mobile, mobile phone sales, wedbush morgan securities
Mike from Office Supplies | Sun, Nov 01 2009
Things from retailers are always cheap and hence most of people do prefer to buy electronic items from supermarkets, i think TARGET will do the same thing.
Carmen from Austin Divorce Attorney | Mon, Nov 02 2009
I don’t know if this will work out for both parties but I’ll surely visit radio shack’s booth whenever I go to Target stores.
Chris McClelland | Tue, Nov 03 2009
I have always been against buying electronics especially cheap electronics from places like wal-mart, target, because they are so cheap and usually marked up. If I do buy them I get them on ebay or somewhere else on the net. However I’m with you Carmen if Radio Shack has a booth in Target I would probably stop by out of curiosity.
Gene from Glass Queens | Sat, Nov 21 2009
It’s strange to see that in today’s competitive environment, a major retailer would just give us a right to make money on cell phones. If it makes sense for Radio Shack to rent out kiosk, that means that there are money to be made. Selling cell phones is not rocket science and Target should have kept it in-house.
Jenya from Cheap iPhones | Sat, Nov 21 2009
I think that Target would have been better off buying some small cell phone retail chain and move it to their stores.