With Radio Shack closings once again making headlines, local franchisee Russell Brackett confirmed that his stores, in Boothbay Harbor and Damariscotta, will continue operating.

The corporation that began in 1921 as a mail-order retailer plans to sell half of its corporate store leases to Sprint Corp. and closing the rest, as it goes into bankruptcy proceedings, according to Brackett.

“Right now it appears that Sprint is online to purchase around 1,700 of the stores,” Brackett said. “Corporate is basically going to disappear by the time this is over and done with. It will all be going to court in the next week or two, and the assets will be sold off.”

Brackett stressed the importance of distinguishing the difference between corporate (company owned) and franchise (privately owned), saying that he and fellow franchisees are safe, because they are independent.

“Corporate has around 4,000 stores nationwide,” he said. “And right now, in domestic and international countries, there are probably just under 900 franchise stores in the U.S. and 1,200 total worldwide. In Maine we're down to around eight franchises.”

In a memo sent to Radio Shack franchisees on Feb. 5, CEO Joe Magnacca stated that the company would be closing a significant number of stores and “restructuring” the company, and would be “commencing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy process.”

Magnacca went on to say that this was a difficult decision “for a proud company and historic brand.”

According to Brackett, it's been almost a year since Radio Shack made national news headlines. Around a year ago there were some issues with Radio Shack announcing they were going to close some stores.

At that time Brackett said that Radio Shack executives wanted to close around 1,000 stores, but investors wouldn't let them.

“They only allowed them to close a couple hundred,” he said at the time.

“They had been running on a deficit for a long time. The company just hadn't been making money,” Brackett said. “People finally just stopped investing money into the company, and the value of the stock went down.”

With the new revelations, Brackett said that he and fellow franchisees from all over the country have begun talks about what strategy they would take.

“We had the notion it was going to happen, whether it was full-blown bankruptcy, or it was just going to close down, or be bought out. So we continued to hold our own, and began making arrangements for worst case scenario.”

Brackett said that he has been on the phone with franchisees all over the country during the past few days. They agreed they could take one of two or more approaches.

“One is to wait it out and see if Radio Shack does a reorganization and continues selling the products at a lower scale, but selling the same line of items that we've always carried,” Brackett said. “The other option is the franchise stores as a group may get together and form our own consortium where we can buy product as a group and have some kind of an organization that we'll have a little bit of power, with the number of stores.

“Right now I don't know which way it's going to go, but to be honest either way would be better than what we've had. I look at this as a good thing. I've been looking forward to it. Radio Shack has been operating on a shoestring, and it was inevitable that this was going to happen,” he said.

What might happen is that it will be a mix, according to Brackett.

“We might end up doing both those things: working independently, plus working through the Radio Shack name.”

Brackett said his biggest concern right now is getting the facts out to the public.

“I'm trying to dispel the idea that when people hear that Radio Shack is going through bankruptcy, they won't come in because they think they won't find anything, but that's not the case.”

In an interview with CNN a few days ago, Brackett and a friend who owns stores in Brattleboro, Vermont, and Greenfield, Massachusetts agreed on the difference between corporate and franchise.

“The reason that one is surviving and the other one isn't is without any question due simply to customer service,” Brackett said in the CNN interview. “It's the neighborhood feel, with the owner in the store, where things get taken care of, and we care about the people. We're not just here to sell, like some of the larger corporate stores are.”

“Everything is copacetic. Nothing is going to happen immediately. Things will change but we'll continue getting product and offering world class service. We had a good year last year, and we'll be carrying on the way we have been.”