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I think Radio Shack could be reborn if it did a few things. Get rid of the cheap toys. Go back to just electronic parts, and today's technology--like having th

I think Radio Shack could be reborn if it did a few things. Get rid of the cheap toys. Go back to just electronic parts, and today's technology--like having the Ardino and Rasberry always in stock--along with all the less know electronic kits. Try to keep the prices down. Keep all radios and cell phone stuff, but get rid of the advertisements(I don't like to walk into loud stores). I would also devote a small section of each store to used/recycled/surplus stuff. The workers shouldn't be required to wear ties.

pconner 12y ago
I wonder how big the market is for Arduino/Raspberry Pi kits at a brick and mortar store when it's so easy (not to mention inexpensive) to buy them online at hobbyist sites like Adafruit.
- mathiasben 12y ago
  Microcenter has a lot of this stuff now a days.
larrys 12y ago
" I would also devote a small section of each store to used/recycled/surplus stuff. " You are talking about something that sounds in a way like "Weird Stuff Warehouse" loved that store. http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=sunnyvalestore http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=sunn... http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=weirdcam http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=weir... Radio Shack has thousands of stores and they are located in shopping centers and malls. They have to get a certain amount per square foot to pay the rent. And mall shoppers (as only one example) aren't really fitting in to this particular market.
VLM 12y ago
Let me demonstrate the problem to you, I have two tabs open on my browser Radioshack.com 10 foot HDMI cable $29.99 "marked down" to $15.99 plus sales tax amazon.com 3 meter HDMI cable $7.49 plus... plus nothing, free prime shipping So I can order from amazon right now and have it in two days, or wait days/hours until I have time to visit a legacy brick and mortar and pay twice as much. So without even looking at the radioshack price, amazon will ship me a rasp pi B bare board for $37.69 prime. I'm guessing $75 at the shack. I go to radioshack.com $119.20 Reg Price $129.99 Pi starter kit. Well, thats got a case, a protoboard, some parts, a flash card, figure maybe $20 worth of stuff. I'm just not seeing it. I assure you that in the 80s comparing Radio Shack to a place like Jameco mail order the prices were vaguely competitive by the time you added shipping and handling and there were minimum orders. RS wasn't a bad deal decades ago, believe it or not! I'm not sure how/why they lost that. From personal experience/gossip and OPs article its not labor costs seeing as paychecks apparently haven't changed much nominally since the 80s. Maybe building rents have exploded? Bad corporate financial deals?
- ek750 12y ago
  > Maybe building rents have exploded? I think this is plausible as a contributing (but by no means primary) factor. I owned a few stores in malls in the 2k's and before the Great Recession hit, the publicly traded mall management companies didn't realize how overbuilt and over-priced their spaces were and charged accordingly. Absolutely insane per-square foot rents + gross profit % of rent. It was absolutely impossible to make a profit based on their 10 year lease rates that didn't account for changing consumer behaviors. I suspect that most Radio Shack locations saw a drop in foot traffic and combined with a mismatch in demographics with their offerings caused a shift to high-pressure sales tactics and less technical products. So sad. I loved the TRS-80. These factors as well as others, probably pushed RS corporate to local optima that ensured their final demise.
  - VLM 12y ago
    "combined with a mismatch in demographics" As a concrete example, the local indoor upscale mall used to sell absolutely everything in the early 80s, like a giant department store. So you can take a teenage son to the mall in the 80s and drop him at Radio Shack to look at computers, video games, scanners, ham radio, stereos, speakers, car audio... but the mall has since converted into 95% womens designer fashion and 5% food court, so the Radio Shack has to switch to selling cell phones to women if they don't want to close. As one of the few non-womens fashion stores left in the mall, in the long run, closing is inevitable, and as a stand alone store they can't compete with the giant stand alone Best Buy store, so they're kind of doomed. I had a model 3 and several coco models including a complete OS-9 system. I never owned anything as nicely designed or as technologically advanced as OS-9 until linux in the early 90s. There's a rather optimistic assumption that technology only moves forwards, but the msdos era wasn't that long ago and provides a counterexample.
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    Funny you say that, I had a friend who owned a 8-10 mall stores (panera-like cafés), most with one developer who was considered the "prime" mall company in the region. He had two stores that due to mall expansion and re configurations just died. He operated both at a serious loss for several years -- at one point the mall was fining him for not making money! It killed his cash flow, but He couldn't pull out without losing his good leases. Ultimately, he was saved when a big box store bought out his lease.
dceddia 12y ago
I was in my local RadioShack (or is it "The Shack" now?) looking for a Hall effect sensor. They didn't have one, but they did have Arduino and Raspberry Pi kits along with some Arduino shields. Sadly though, the electronic parts + kits section of RadioShack reminds me of the PC games section of most game stores now. It's so underwhelmingly small that, if you can manage to even find it, chances are it won't have what you came for anyway.
TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
>I think Radio Shack could be reborn if it did a few things. Top of the list should be 'Replace all middle and senior executives and managers.' It's fascinating to watch how organisations slide into extreme failure and dysfunction. And the loss is total - not is only is RS a terrible place to shop, it's a terrible place to work. Achieving an outcome with absolutely no upside takes real talent. But this kind of simmering hostility to everyone below a certain managerial seems endemic in corporations that grow beyond a certain size. It's not guaranteed to happen, but it seems to happen more often than it should. It's a fascinating phenomenon. It's surprising it hasn't been researched more fully.

pconner 12y ago

I wonder how big the market is for Arduino/Raspberry Pi kits at a brick and mortar store when it's so easy (not to mention inexpensive) to buy them online at hobbyist sites like Adafruit.

mathiasben 12y ago
Microcenter has a lot of this stuff now a days.

larrys 12y ago

" I would also devote a small section of each store to used/recycled/surplus stuff. " You are talking about something that sounds in a way like "Weird Stuff Warehouse" loved that store. http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=sunnyvalestore http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=sunn... http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=weirdcam http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=weir... Radio Shack has thousands of stores and they are located in shopping centers and malls. They have to get a certain amount per square foot to pay the rent. And mall shoppers (as only one example) aren't really fitting in to this particular market.

VLM 12y ago

Let me demonstrate the problem to you, I have two tabs open on my browser Radioshack.com 10 foot HDMI cable $29.99 "marked down" to $15.99 plus sales tax amazon.com 3 meter HDMI cable $7.49 plus... plus nothing, free prime shipping So I can order from amazon right now and have it in two days, or wait days/hours until I have time to visit a legacy brick and mortar and pay twice as much. So without even looking at the radioshack price, amazon will ship me a rasp pi B bare board for $37.69 prime. I'm guessing $75 at the shack. I go to radioshack.com $119.20 Reg Price $129.99 Pi starter kit. Well, thats got a case, a protoboard, some parts, a flash card, figure maybe $20 worth of stuff. I'm just not seeing it. I assure you that in the 80s comparing Radio Shack to a place like Jameco mail order the prices were vaguely competitive by the time you added shipping and handling and there were minimum orders. RS wasn't a bad deal decades ago, believe it or not! I'm not sure how/why they lost that. From personal experience/gossip and OPs article its not labor costs seeing as paychecks apparently haven't changed much nominally since the 80s. Maybe building rents have exploded? Bad corporate financial deals?

ek750 12y ago
> Maybe building rents have exploded? I think this is plausible as a contributing (but by no means primary) factor. I owned a few stores in malls in the 2k's and before the Great Recession hit, the publicly traded mall management companies didn't realize how overbuilt and over-priced their spaces were and charged accordingly. Absolutely insane per-square foot rents + gross profit % of rent. It was absolutely impossible to make a profit based on their 10 year lease rates that didn't account for changing consumer behaviors. I suspect that most Radio Shack locations saw a drop in foot traffic and combined with a mismatch in demographics with their offerings caused a shift to high-pressure sales tactics and less technical products. So sad. I loved the TRS-80. These factors as well as others, probably pushed RS corporate to local optima that ensured their final demise.
- VLM 12y ago
  "combined with a mismatch in demographics" As a concrete example, the local indoor upscale mall used to sell absolutely everything in the early 80s, like a giant department store. So you can take a teenage son to the mall in the 80s and drop him at Radio Shack to look at computers, video games, scanners, ham radio, stereos, speakers, car audio... but the mall has since converted into 95% womens designer fashion and 5% food court, so the Radio Shack has to switch to selling cell phones to women if they don't want to close. As one of the few non-womens fashion stores left in the mall, in the long run, closing is inevitable, and as a stand alone store they can't compete with the giant stand alone Best Buy store, so they're kind of doomed. I had a model 3 and several coco models including a complete OS-9 system. I never owned anything as nicely designed or as technologically advanced as OS-9 until linux in the early 90s. There's a rather optimistic assumption that technology only moves forwards, but the msdos era wasn't that long ago and provides a counterexample.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Funny you say that, I had a friend who owned a 8-10 mall stores (panera-like cafés), most with one developer who was considered the "prime" mall company in the region. He had two stores that due to mall expansion and re configurations just died. He operated both at a serious loss for several years -- at one point the mall was fining him for not making money! It killed his cash flow, but He couldn't pull out without losing his good leases. Ultimately, he was saved when a big box store bought out his lease.

dceddia 12y ago

I was in my local RadioShack (or is it "The Shack" now?) looking for a Hall effect sensor. They didn't have one, but they did have Arduino and Raspberry Pi kits along with some Arduino shields. Sadly though, the electronic parts + kits section of RadioShack reminds me of the PC games section of most game stores now. It's so underwhelmingly small that, if you can manage to even find it, chances are it won't have what you came for anyway.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago

>I think Radio Shack could be reborn if it did a few things. Top of the list should be 'Replace all middle and senior executives and managers.' It's fascinating to watch how organisations slide into extreme failure and dysfunction. And the loss is total - not is only is RS a terrible place to shop, it's a terrible place to work. Achieving an outcome with absolutely no upside takes real talent. But this kind of simmering hostility to everyone below a certain managerial seems endemic in corporations that grow beyond a certain size. It's not guaranteed to happen, but it seems to happen more often than it should. It's a fascinating phenomenon. It's surprising it hasn't been researched more fully.