Charles tandy biography

Tandy entered his father's business at the age of 12.
Charles David Tandy was the chairman of the board, president, and chief executive officer of the Tandy Corporation.
Charles David Tandy, Tandy Corporation founder, philanthropist, and civic leader, the son of David L. Tandy and Carmen (McLain), was born in Brownsville, Texas.

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CHARLES D. TANDY

1918- 1978

The man who built Radio Shack was Charles Tandy, a wily Texan who always had a cigar in hand. Tandy's beginnings were inauspicious: In 1935 he flunked out of Rice University. He subsequently received a degree from Texas Christian University, and from there it was a year at the Harvard Business School and then the navy and World War II. Meanwhile his father was selling leather soles and other shoemaking supplies to shoe-repair shops, with little prospects for company growth. But young Tandy discovered that leathercraft projects were popular with the injured soldiers recuperating in hospitals, and wrote to his dad that he should expand into leathercraft supplies. When Tandy left the navy in 1947, father and son organized the Tandy Leather Company, a mail-order/ retail-store operation.

Business boomed and by the mid-1950s Tandy was looking to enter new fields. He first learned of Radio Shack in 1961, but it would be another two years before he bought the small electronics retail chain. When he took over Radio Shack, there were only nine outlets,

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Tandy, Charles David

(b. 15 May 1918 in Brownsville, Texas; d. 4 November 1978 in Fort Worth, Texas), major industrialist and entrepreneur who, during the 1960s, transformed a family leather business into an international conglomerate that included Pier One Imports and RadioShack.

Tandy was the first of two children of David, a leather merchant, and Carmen (McClain) Tandy, a housewife. He attended public schools in Brownsville and Fort Worth and started work at the age of twelve, helping his father sell shoe bindings to repair shops. His father and a partner co-owned the Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company. Tandy graduated from Texas Christian University in 1940 and entered Harvard Business School.

In 1941 Tandy joined the navy and became a supply officer stationed in Hawaii. He noticed sailors being taught knitting and needlepoint as part of recuperative therapy. Believing that the men would prefer leatherwork to needlework, he established a system of leather craft for hospitalized service personnel. In letters to his father, he noted that leather craft not only was useful in

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Academy of Achievement Charles D Tandy David L Tandy

Inducted 1991
Posthumous

Charles Tandy was born in Brownsville, Texas to Dave L. Tandy, who ran the Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company with his friend Norton Hinckley. He was educated at the R. L. Paschal High School. In 1940 he graduated from Texas Christian University. He then spent some time at the Harvard Business School before joining the US Navy for the remainder of World War II. While in the Navy he set a record for selling war bonds.

Charles developed his small family leather business into an international corporation. He first turned it into a leathercraft company when shoe rationing in World War II almost killed the business, and later expanded into selling leather and tools to make such products as wallets. After a struggle over the company, which saw the Hinckley name dropped, the company was renamed to Tandy Corporation. In 1963, Tandy acquired the ailing RadioShack, a chain of nine retail stores in the Boston area.

Tandy died of a heart attack in his sleep, on 4 November 1978.

*Deceased Member