Charles David Tandy was the chairman of the board, president, and chief executive officer of the Tandy Corporation. He was born May 15, 1918 and died November 4, 1978. Tandy was involved in the creation or expansion of three retail chains: Tandy Leather, Radio Shack, and Pier 1 Imports.
Tandy was the second of three children born to Carmen (née McLain) and David Lewis Tandy in Brownsville, Texas, on May 15, 1918. Charles’ youngest brother, Bill, went on to run his own chain of leather craft stores in the early 1950s before merging with Tandy Corporation.
At the age of 10, Charles and a classmate started selling scraps of leather from his father’s store to classmates for spare change, teaching them how to make belts out of them. With another classmate whose father owned a boot company, they started making heavier belts from scraps of boot leather that they sold to department stores.
