Stores are not the only thing the bankrupt RadioShack is selling, Bloomberg reports-- the anachronistic 94-year old brand is also hitting the auction block, with bids starting at $20 million.

Standard General, an affiliate lender of General Wireless and buyer of as many as 2000 US RadioShack stores, leads the bidding.

Also on sale are the rest of RadioShack's 4000 stores, some of which will be bought by games retailer GameStop. An unspecified number of stores will be co-branded with mobile carrier Sprint.

Darty reports Y-o-Y sales declines of -2.9% Y-o-Y for fiscal Q3 (the period from 1 November 2014 31 January 2015), as the period suffers from comparison to a stronger 2014 and a weak tablet and digital camera sales.

Also hitting the retailer's quarter-- and consumer confidence-- are the terrorist attacks on Paris in early January, offsetting strong performance on the Black Friday weekend and web sales growth reaching nearly 10% to make 15% of total product sales.

Darty says multichannel click-and-collect proves popular, with 30% of December online sales being collected in-store.

However total group revenues are up by 2.4%, thanks to "good" growth in the white goods and communications categories. The quarter also saw the retailer adding 11 franchisees in France (bringing the total number of French franchise stores to 34) and completing the acquisition of 17 "profitable" Netherlands outlets from HiM Retail.

Time has indeed run out for RadioShack-- the venerable retailer files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announces the sale of up to 2400 US stores to Standard General, an affiliate of lender General Wireless.

Following the agreement General Wireless will team up with mobile carrier Sprint to create dedicated "store within a store" outlets in up to 1750 of the acquired RadioShack stores.

"These steps are the culmination of a thorough process intended to drive maximum value for our stakeholders," RadioShack CEO Joe Magnacca says.

The agreement covers RadioShack's 4000 stores in the US, and does not include the dealer franchise stores in other countries, meaning the 94-year old RadioShack name might still live on elsewhere as a franchised brand name.

Staples acquires rival office supply retailer Office Depot in a $6.3 billion deal, one analysts describe as an attempt to avoid the fate of the likes of RadioShack in the face of Walmart and online competition.

The acquisition is, of course, not without controversy-- after all, Staples and Office Depot are the top two office supplies retailers in the US, and as such it will surely fire up the ire of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and antitrust investigators. In fact, the authorities already stopped a previous attempt at a Staples-Office Depot merger back in 1996.

Then again, one can point out the FTC approved of Office Depot's November 2014 acquisition of the no. 3 office supply retailer, OfficeMax, not to mention a changing industry where Amazon and mega retailers such as Walmart and Costco also stab at B2B business.

Bloomberg is the latest to report on the woes affecting RadioShack-- apparently the retailer is set to shut down in a bankruptcy deal selling around half its store leases to Sprint and closing the rest.

The anonymous sources add the sold outlets will operate under the Sprint name, meaning the 94-year old RadioShack will cease to exist as a stand-alone retailer. However negotiations are still ongoing, meaning talks can either break down or lead to a co-branding agreement, possibly as part of a store-within-a-store concept involving the wireless carrier.

Another possibility is that of another bidder entering the fray-- such as the Sanpower Group, the Chinese backers who took the Brookstone chain out of bankruptcy back in June 2014.

In an effort to avoid the same fate as Phones4U-- specifically that of closing down due to losing support from the major UK mobile carriers-- Dixons Carphone forms a multi-year alliance with EE.

The retailer already has similar long-term agreements with Vodafone and O2, as confirmed earlier last year.

“This long term partnership with EE takes us in to the next decade with a joint focus on the amazing potential of connected technology, building on EE’s industry-leading 4G network and growing presence in the home," Carphone Warehouse CEO Graham Stapleton says. "Creating deeper relationships with our network partners reinforces the ongoing importance of providing customers with independent advice and deals that are personalised to their needs."

Representatives from a number of retailers, including Dixons, Darty, Euronics and Bimeks, discuss the issues European retail faces in 2015 at a Context breakfast briefing, such as the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Also in attendance were vendors and distributors such as Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, AMD, Netgear, Webroot, the GTDC and Esprinet.

“IoT is one of the main topics for 2015, but the IoT landscape is complex, fragmented and in full motion," Euronics International president Hans Carpels says. "It is not an easy area to serve as a retailer.”

According to Carpels such complexity deters customers from making related acquisitions-- and as such retailers need to fully "explain the efficiency and the economic advantages.”

According to FTI Consulting in the future the retail industry will be stuck in "The New Mediocre", a period where one must take action if brick-and-mortar outlets want to remain relevant in an increasingly online world.

The analyst says a number of factors have led to the declines the industry current faces-- an oversupply of stores, maturation (and lack of differentiation) in many stores and brands, a lack of "hot ticket" items, changing demographics, uneven economic recovery, customers wanting to spend money on services and experiences and, ultimately, online retail sales causing a destabilising effect on store economics.

“Retailers today are facing a magnitude of issues and challenges in a landscape where the only constant is the accelerating pace of change,” FTI adds. “Retailers have reached a crossroads, with many of them merely hanging on, it is clear to us that there needs to be an evolution in their business approach to stay afloat.”