brammieboy007:
We don't have that shop in Belgium. Everyone is always talking about Radioshack on this forum
Radio Shack is a chain of electronics stores in the USA. Originally it started out as a leather company (Tandy). The owner got interested in the electronics of the day (1980's or so), and bought a small company. For awhile, the stores had both leather and electronics, but eventually the company spun off the leather supply company into a separate company. They even had their own computer for awhile (TRS-80, universally sneered at as Trash-80). In the late 1990's and 2000's, the company moved away from the hobbiest market, and tried to compete with the big box electronics stores, and not succeeding that well. Right now, many malls in the USA have a Radio Shack. While most of what they sell is cell phones, and other finished electronic stuff, they usually have a large filing cabinet in the back, that you can get resistors, switches, etc. RS also carries official Arduino boards.
As a side note, except for Best Buy, most of the big box stores that only did electronics have also passed from the scene. In the last few years, RS has started to try and bring back the home builder market. They are now starting a push to modernize the store and had a commercial with icons from the 1980's US TV shows, saying the 80's called and wanted their RS back, and had a store razing to come out with whatever their new stuff will be. Unfortunately last month, they just announced that they would be closing 1,000 stores (that was what my comment was about if you still have one nearby).
Now as a consumer, many RS's that I've been into have clerks that have no real electronics knowledge, and they have a deer in the headlights look if you ask them anything technical. These clerks seem to push upgrading cell phones heavily. Now, occasionally, you will find a RS with a clerk who has some electronics knowledge, and those are nice (but very rare). While their prices are a little on the high side when you compare to mail order, they are very useful if you need a particular resistor, wire, etc. late at night. Personally, if the 3 RS's near me all closed, I would be sorry for the people laid off, but since I have stores within an hour away that I can get basic components as well as Sparkfun/Adafruit/etc. kits, it won't affect me as much as others who may not be as fortunate.
Oh as an amusing side note, you might think leather working and electronics have nothing to do with each other (and generally they don't), with some of my steampunk camera builds, I have bought both leather goods (from the Tandy leather company) and electronics bits and pieces from Radio Shack in the same day.