South Whidbey’s two RadioShack stores will stay open amid news that RadioShack Corp. filed for bankruptcy and would shutter more than 1,700 stores nationwide.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Feb. 5 and announced a wave of stores to potentially be closed. None of the three Whidbey stores — Oak Harbor, Freeland, and Clinton — are included in a document titled “Potential store closure list” on the radioshackcorporation.com website.

That’s because the two South Whidbey stores are independently owned and operated.

“We are locally-owned as always,” said owner Mike Rains on Tuesday morning.

“People always forget we’re not a corporation,” he added.

According to one RadioShack employee who identified himself as Rick, the Oak Harbor store’s staff was not informed of any change.

“They haven’t informed us,” he said Monday afternoon.

Later, he said that it was “Business as usual,” before hanging up.

Of the electronics chain’s 4,000 stores, up to 1,750 may be purchased and operated as a “store within a store” by Sprint Wireless and Standard General, according to a company news release. South Whidbey’s stores aren’t likely to see Sprint phones, however, because there are no Sprint cell towers on South Whidbey, Rains said.

While the stores carry the RadioShack logo, signs and have the franchise look, Rains said his stores’ business comes from things beyond RadioShack products.

“We concentrate more on things outside of RadioShack, things that people need: computer repair, virus removal, TVs, ink, MP3 players,” he said.

“The Greatest Generation knew us from RadioShack,” Rains added. “Unfortunately, their kids don’t.”

On South Whidbey, electronics retailers are hard to come by, leaving RadioShack with a near-captive audience. Part of Rains’ marketing and branding plan has been to accentuate the different services and additional products beyond standard RadioShack stores.

During the opening hour Tuesday, a pair of customers came in holding remnants of what used to be a power cable for a car’s DVD player and a pair of headphones. They didn’t know the brand, but asked Rains for help finding a fix or replacement anyway.

“We’re still the resource for technology,” he said.