Sprint has announced a deal with RadioShack to build Sprint stores within 1750 RadioShack stores as part of RadioShack’s restructuring. The comment below may be attributed to Jan Dawson, Chief Analyst, Jackdaw Research. Jan may be reached for further comment at jan@jackdawresearch.com or (408) 744-6244.
Sprint’s deal is a smart way to dramatically increase its footprint of company-owned retail locations. It’s lagged behind its three major competitors in terms of company-owned store footprint. Each of its major competitors has over 2000 company owned stores, and Sprint will now leapfrog to 2750 company-owned locations with the addition of the RadioShack stores. This gives Sprint both a much bigger opportunity to capture walk-in business from customers and a much better mix of owned versus indirect distribution, which should have a positive effects on a number of other metrics. Stores have been one of several major areas where Sprint and T-Mobile have both suffered from a lack of scale compared to AT&T and Verizon, and this deal is a cost-effective, rapid way for Sprint to make some rapid progress. In the process, it’s converting these RadioShack stores from multi-carrier dealerships to directly-owned, exclusive Sprint retailers. The fact that Sprint employees will be staffing the stores within a store is a major advantage, too, compared with third party retailers.