FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A RadioShack that has been part of Fayetteville for decades is shutting down next month.
Ryan Vaughn, who runs the store at 1702 N. College Ave. with his wife, remembers being a kid in his grandpa’s RadioShack store.
“It was Christmas for months on end," Vaughn said of his family's business. "They would have me come into the store when I was a kid just to play with the toys so that other parents could see how much fun they were and so they could sell more."
At one point, his grandfather owned five RadioShacks, opening his first in Northwest Arkansas in 1971.
As the stores passed through the family over the decades, they started to close for various reasons, leaving the Fayetteville location as the last one standing.
“RadioShack, to me, is a place where you can go and get some help," Vaughn explained. "Not only to help fix something, but to help connect something. Help figure something out."
Many of the Vaughns’ customers are regulars.
“I have been since I was 7 years old,” customer Steven Peterson said.
Peterson shops at the Vaughns’ RadioShack three to four times a month to hunt down specific parts for his auto electric business.
“I’m not down on the internet, but I like to have the interchange, talk to people, you know they wonder what you’re building with that part they haven’t sold in five years,” Peterson shared.
If you ask for help from an employee, they might be one of Ryan’s sons who grew up around the family business and now work for it.
“I wouldn’t say I appreciated it while I was younger," Justin Vaughn said. "But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve recognized that yeah, this is an important store."
He might add that working for his parents has had pros and cons.
“I can’t lie!" Cody Vaughn said, laughing. "They usually know what’s going on all the time so it’s really easy whenever I have something that comes up."
Vaughn says sales are about a third of what they were before the pandemic and have never really recovered.
“People don’t tend to fix things as much anymore, they’re really inexpensive and it’s a lot easier sometimes to just go get a new one," Ryan Vaughn said.
What is irreplaceable to him though is all the time he’s spent working with his wife and kids.
As this chapter closes, he has one wish for the future.
“Maybe somebody watching this, maybe if you’ve got a position open that one of our guys here could help fill, you won’t find somebody that’s more motivated to help people or to learn new things than the people that are working here," Vaughn said.
The Fayetteville RadioShack is set to close on June 1st, and the Vaughns have discounted all of their products.
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