Tandy Corporation
- Snippet from Wikipedia: Tandy Corporation
Tandy Corporation was an American family-owned retailer based in Fort Worth, Texas that made leather goods, operated the RadioShack chain, and later built personal computers.
Tandy Leather was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store. By the end of the 1950s, under the tutelage of then-CEO Charles Tandy, the company expanded into the hobby market, making leather moccasins and coin purses, making huge sales among Scouts, leading to a fast growth in sales. Aiming to broaden the company horizon, Charles Tandy acquired a number of craft retail companies, including RadioShack in 1963, then an almost bankrupt chain of electronics stores in Boston.
In the 1970s and 1980s, now led by John Roach as CEO, the corporation started to invest into the personal computer market following the introduction of the popular TRS-80; it was one of the pioneers in the rising personal computer industry, being lauded by the magazine Financial World as "the driving force at the front-running company in the red-hot personal computer race". Unable to keep up with cost-cutting competitors, Tandy exited the PC business in 1993, selling its assets to AST Research, retaining its profitable goods-making units. In 2000, the Tandy Corporation name was dropped, and the entity became the RadioShack Corporation.