A few years ago RadioShack contacted Adafruit in an effort to stock our products in their thousands of stores around the USA. This sounds like a dream come true but we decided to decline and focus on our online store and partners who could supply a retailer with Adafruit products.

February 5th, 2015 RadioShack filed for bankruptcy, we have some coverage here on our site about some of the details and store closing.

RadioShack Corporation (15-10197)–

On February 5, 2015, RadioShack Corporation and 17 affiliated debtors (collectively, the “Debtors”) each filed a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The Debtors’ cases are pending before the Honorable Brendan L. Shannon and are jointly administered under Case No. 15-10197.

From this page you can type in a company name in “Creditor Name” section and search for companies that are owed money, here are a few of the well-known maker companies and also, a larger company, Apple.

Seeed Studio is owed the most: $806,051.63

Maker Media (MAKE Magazine) is owed two amounts: $28,017.00 and $78,713.66, total of: $106,730.66

Magyc (Arduino) is owed: $105,235.15

Parallax is owed: $77,953.94

Velleman is owed: $31,002.00

littleBits is owed: $19,100.00

Afinia (3D printer company) is owed: $1,727.52

Looks like Apple is owed: $18,897.19, $5,164.00 and $14,523.00, for a total of: $38,584.19

RadioShack has paid some companies in the past, here is a list of suppliers and recent payments RadioShack has made (PDF).

Payments made to creditors within 90 days of commencement of this case:

Seeed: No payment indicated.

Magyc: No payment indicated.

Maker Media: $305,404.75 paid

Parallax: $62,661.79 paid

Velleman: $6,824.72 paid

littleBits: No payment indicated.

Afinia: No payment noted.

Apple was paid $3,309,900.00

What does this all mean? We’re guessing (so please chime in if you are an expert on this) – the smaller maker companies got the worst of this while a large company like Apple likely had contractual requirements to be paid immediately or sooner than the smaller companies, for Apple to be owed less than Parallax, Arduino, MAKE or Seeed is almost impossible to believe.

We are really reluctant to sell our products directly to retailers, the contracts are unfair towards a small company, it’s basically consignment and most of the time the buyer doesn’t actually care, you’re just part of a spreadsheet somewhere.

Post up in the comments if we missed something of you have some insights to help others.