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Wow, I always kind of assumed Dick Smith was just a fictional mascot like Betty Crocker, but he was a real dude. I lived in New Zealand for a short while growi

Wow, I always kind of assumed Dick Smith was just a fictional mascot like Betty Crocker, but he was a real dude. I lived in New Zealand for a short while growing up and we used to refer to Dick Smith Electronics as "Dip-shit Electronics" because the prices could be pretty outrageous. It was otherwise a pretty cool store, though; think somewhere between Radio Shack and Best Buy.

Taniwha 5y ago
Yeah Disk Smith came in to NZ and replaced a perfectly good electronics parts wholesaler with over priced retail crud
- jsmeaton 5y ago
  Are you talking about the Kogan-clone that took over the online store about 5 or 6 years ago, or prior to that? The online part of the business was sold off to Kogan and became another online store front.
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    I'm talking about what happened in the 80s
    - Reason077 5y ago
      Care to elaborate? I’m not old enough to remember much before the mid-to-late 80s, but I remember my local NZ Dick Smith Electronics being a pretty cool and wondrous place back then.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  > replaced a perfectly good electronics parts wholesaler David Reid? Radio Spares? (There was another with a name that started with T, but it's slipped my mind.)
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    David Reid, they took over a bunch of their storefronts
barbs 5y ago
I used to work at one of those, after Woolworths had bought it. I had expected the job to be more about explaining how electronics work and finding the right thing to solve the customer's technical problems but it was all very sales focussed.
flog 5y ago
DSE was an absolute rip off, but it was pretty much the only game in town. As a kid it was an amazing place for me to spend an hour on the weekends pottering around all the electronic kitsets and latest computer parts/gadgets. I would credit DSE with fostering a lot of my love of computers and technology. I am quite sad it no longer exists.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  That reminds me... on top of the shifts in society because of COVID, it's a shame that there's no place like Dick Smith, Frys, Radio Shack, computer stores, etc., where young geeks can go and meet each other. I was a geek among geeks as a kid, but even then I still liked that I could go to electronics stores, comic shops, hobby stores, and just be around people who were kind of weird like me and also had a love for the sorts of things I was interested in. With most of today's meetups still being "remote", at least where I live, I have to wonder where the hell a young me would be able to go today. I'd just have to network through Discord and hope that my server doesn't suddenly get banned because Dischord Inc. thinks it's a group of "hackers". Basically, I think there was something to having physical places to go to. It's a culture that seems nearly dead.
  - barrysaunders 5y ago
    Jaycar still does a lot of this! The one in Central Park Sydney still does a lot of workshops, they have a maker hub, sell a lot of the class electronic components and things like that. Nothing like it used to be with Dick Smith and Radio Shack everywhere, but there's still a few places around.
    - __d 5y ago
      Jaycar has taken over the "over-priced retail" segment of the electronics store market that DSE used to hold (and Tandy before that). But most of the old stores are gone as everything has moved online.
      - smackeyacky 5y ago
cmroanirgo 5y ago
In the early days DSE was like jaycar. An electronics store with kits and diy computers. Dick sold it off years ago. The stores are part of Kogan now (importing and flogging chinese stuff).
- Tehdasi 5y ago
  "In the early days DSE was like Jaycar." Not that surprising. The origin story of Jaycar is that when DSE was being sold to Woolworths DS took aside an exec at DSE and said that Woolworths were going to run DSE into the ground. He advised the exec to start up his own rival chain, which he did, and thus Jaycar. Still, whilst Jaycar appears to be quite successful, DS wasn't entirely right, it took 34 years for the brand to die.

Taniwha 5y ago

Yeah Disk Smith came in to NZ and replaced a perfectly good electronics parts wholesaler with over priced retail crud

jsmeaton 5y ago
Are you talking about the Kogan-clone that took over the online store about 5 or 6 years ago, or prior to that? The online part of the business was sold off to Kogan and became another online store front.
- Taniwha 5y ago
  I'm talking about what happened in the 80s
  - Reason077 5y ago
    Care to elaborate? I’m not old enough to remember much before the mid-to-late 80s, but I remember my local NZ Dick Smith Electronics being a pretty cool and wondrous place back then.
tuatoru 5y ago
> replaced a perfectly good electronics parts wholesaler David Reid? Radio Spares? (There was another with a name that started with T, but it's slipped my mind.)
- Taniwha 5y ago
  David Reid, they took over a bunch of their storefronts

barbs 5y ago

I used to work at one of those, after Woolworths had bought it. I had expected the job to be more about explaining how electronics work and finding the right thing to solve the customer's technical problems but it was all very sales focussed.

flog 5y ago

DSE was an absolute rip off, but it was pretty much the only game in town. As a kid it was an amazing place for me to spend an hour on the weekends pottering around all the electronic kitsets and latest computer parts/gadgets. I would credit DSE with fostering a lot of my love of computers and technology. I am quite sad it no longer exists.

ravenstine 5y ago
That reminds me... on top of the shifts in society because of COVID, it's a shame that there's no place like Dick Smith, Frys, Radio Shack, computer stores, etc., where young geeks can go and meet each other. I was a geek among geeks as a kid, but even then I still liked that I could go to electronics stores, comic shops, hobby stores, and just be around people who were kind of weird like me and also had a love for the sorts of things I was interested in. With most of today's meetups still being "remote", at least where I live, I have to wonder where the hell a young me would be able to go today. I'd just have to network through Discord and hope that my server doesn't suddenly get banned because Dischord Inc. thinks it's a group of "hackers". Basically, I think there was something to having physical places to go to. It's a culture that seems nearly dead.
- barrysaunders 5y ago
  Jaycar still does a lot of this! The one in Central Park Sydney still does a lot of workshops, they have a maker hub, sell a lot of the class electronic components and things like that. Nothing like it used to be with Dick Smith and Radio Shack everywhere, but there's still a few places around.
  - __d 5y ago
    Jaycar has taken over the "over-priced retail" segment of the electronics store market that DSE used to hold (and Tandy before that). But most of the old stores are gone as everything has moved online.
    - smackeyacky 5y ago

cmroanirgo 5y ago

In the early days DSE was like jaycar. An electronics store with kits and diy computers. Dick sold it off years ago. The stores are part of Kogan now (importing and flogging chinese stuff).

Tehdasi 5y ago
"In the early days DSE was like Jaycar." Not that surprising. The origin story of Jaycar is that when DSE was being sold to Woolworths DS took aside an exec at DSE and said that Woolworths were going to run DSE into the ground. He advised the exec to start up his own rival chain, which he did, and thus Jaycar. Still, whilst Jaycar appears to be quite successful, DS wasn't entirely right, it took 34 years for the brand to die.