8 ms·

RadioShack Suffered as Free Time Evaporated

37 points by larrys 12y ago

diydsp 12y ago
For ~50 years, Radio Shack rode major trends in consumer electronics quite well. Amateur radios, walkie-talkies, CB radios, home stereos, home computers, cell phones, they did it all (except interestingly PCs they didn't do so great). It was only when electronics became so mainstream, competition increased and profits became marginal they couldn't survive. It's too bad, but if we're smart instead of over-analyzing this, we'll should keep our eyes peeled for the next industries that will go under.
- warnhardcode 12y ago
  They did PCs fine for a little while. Tandy 1000s were popular back in the day.
  - mkr-hn 12y ago
    My first computer was a display model Tandy 1000 HX. I was young and didn't know much about the internal bits, but I did know rapidly turning it off and on made a lot of neat things show on the screen. Whoops.
cylinder 12y ago
Hobby electronics? You can't even get a simple power adapter at RadioShack anymore. RadioShack is a joke.
sokoloff 12y ago
Article> many in the maker movement can’t comprehend why their beloved RadioShack is failing. Really? I would think that anyone who had tried to purchase parts for a maker-type project in their local RadioShack would understand in the hour it took the clueless clerk to point the prospective customer past the displays of cell phones, $30 HDMI cables, and RC toys to the lone, dusty cabinet of mis-filed and comically over-priced components. I have a soft spot in my heart for TRS, taught myself BASIC one summer on a TRS-80, bought every Forrest Mims engineer's notebook, loved my 50-in-1 electronics kit, and even today occasionally use a through-hole resistor from my collection of RS parts. I wish they weren't going away, but I sure as hell comprehend WHY they died...
- mindslight 12y ago
  Or not even needing the clerk, getting your item and observing the ridiculous prices they had on larger items. I stopped in to my local Radio Shack the other day to check if they were having the clearance yet and witnessed a 5-port 10/100 switch priced at $70. Meanwhile you can get a gigabit one at Newegg for $25 (without sale). It's almost if they took the margin they were able to obtain on electronic components and applied it to everything else in the store, managing to stay alive from the occasional sucker who thought it an appropriate place to buy tech.
  - flyinghamster 12y ago
    I had an eight-port switch whose wall wart PSU had failed. I thought, "Hey, why not go over to Radio Shack and get a PSU, instead of pitching what was otherwise a perfectly good switch?" Well, as it turned out, RS wanted as much for a suitable wall wart as it would cost to buy a complete new switch elsewhere.
larrys 12y ago
To get behind paywall google "RadioShack Suffered as Free Time Evaporated" This should also work: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fradioshack-suffered-as-free-time-evaporated-1423441817&ei=7t3YVPCjJ8jnsASX8oHgBQ&usg=AFQjCNHGMnVNMPDo9_pfHPflP1JNgsk03A&bvm=bv.85464276,d.cWc&cad=rja http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Correlation doesn't imply causation. RadioShack suffered as tech toys' guts became highly integrated and didn't yield to tinkering.
- mark-r 12y ago
  This. The time when you could build your own computer from parts has been long past. The 3D printer revolution is something that could have brought them back to their roots, but it's not big enough (yet) to sustain such a huge company. And unless you accidentally walked past a store, you'd have no way of knowing what's on offer - they haven't been a compelling destination for a long time too.
  - nkohari 12y ago
    > The time when you could build your own computer from parts has been long past. This is simply not true. You may choose not to build your own computer, but the components are no less available than before -- in fact, commoditization has made them more affordable than ever before.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Well, you can put a computer in a box, sure. But build your own used to mean a lot more than a chip or two.
      - nkohari 12y ago
        If you mean building a computer from fundamental components, you can still do that too. It just won't feel quite as magical today as it did in the 70s or 80s because of the ubiquity of modern computers.
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        I guess I meant building a computer with a chance to make real decisions. E.g. busses, interrupt architecture, memory controller etc. Now its all integrated. You use a certain chip; you need a certain chipset to support it. Your project becomes cut-and-paste of the single supported design. Why do it at all if you can't change anything significant? "I built it myself, but no, its not different in any important way from one you could buy off the shelf cheaper"?
cushychicken 12y ago
I totally reject this article's somewhat Marxist undertone that RadioShack's demise was due to Americans' lack of demand for hobby electronics - rather, just generally poor decisions and a terrible rebrand by company leadership towards selling (what they perceived to be) high margin consumer junk like TVs, cell phones, and RC cars. We live in the era of Make magazine and hackaday.com. The maker community didn't vanish. They realized they could get the stuff they wanted from the internet for cheaper, and with less aggravation. (Much nicer than digging around in a RS part drawer for the one transistor you need - but can't find - for you 330MHz transmitter build.) It was a crappy business decision from the top that just took years and years to manifest as catastrophe.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I totally reject this article's somewhat Marxist undertone that RadioShack's demise was due to Americans' lack of demand for hobby electronics How is such an explicitly market-based argument "somewhat Marxist"?
  - tlb 12y ago
    Marx predicted that tensions inherent in capitalism would cause the system to destroy itself. Radio Shack's story seems like what he thought would happen to the entire system: relentless expansion beyond its core mission, in order to serve capitalism's need for unlimited growth, caused its inevitable downfall.
    - marincounty 12y ago
      I get skewered, but in this case maybe Marx was right? I thought they had too many stores. In my neck of the woods, they had three within 10 minutes driving? This company seemed to be having trouble even before the Internet. They seemed to run the stores like it was still the 50's?(demanding ties, while paying minimum wage=grouchy employees). The website was always terrible. Marketing was terrible. Seemed top heavy with assistant regional managers, corporate big wigs, etc. My last time shopping there I bought a tube if Artic 5 to reball a faulty HP graphic chip. The price was more than 2-3 online competitors price. The nice guy helping me said, "You are not are typical customer." I knew what he meant, and I was sad. I walked past the garbage near the front entrance, the dissy array of phone plans, dodging marketing stands, and said goodby to the only lonely employee." I knew that would be my last time in a Radio Shack. (The only reason I can imagine why they loaded up the front of the stores with--crap, is because maybe we don't tinker as much as I want to think? I know you people do, but the average consumer--I've seen so many people roll their eyes when I tell them I can fix it. "Just buy a new one!" As to crafts, like sewing and leather work--I think people will get back into it, but right now it's just easier to buy because their is a lack of time. I will never forget the neck Ties and the perpetual help wanted sign though.
analog31 12y ago
Christopher Mims related to Forrest Mims?
- Thrymr 12y ago
  He says no: https://twitter.com/mims/status/306453610961702913 https://twitter.com/mims/status/306453610961702913
- VLM 12y ago
  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SmokeSecret/smoke_secret4.php http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SmokeSecret/smoke_... Not a direct descendant, anyway. Forrest is a parental role model for my own parenting, at least WRT science and hobbies. Cool dude.
Thrymr 12y ago
"Americans are too busy to tinker" is not a very plausible premise for Radio Shack's demise. Others in this tread have pointed out Radio Shack's longstanding problems and failure to find a niche in the modern retail world. I'll just add that if it's really the lack of leisure time that's driving the decline, other leisure-based businesses (travel, entertainment, etc.) would be failing as well, and they're not. According to the Economist [0], "American men toil for pay nearly 12 hours less per week, on average, than they did 40 years ago—a fall that includes all work-related activities, such as commuting and water-cooler breaks". The big caveat to that is that people with more education are working more, and those with less education are working less. That may have some part in it, but the truth is that if Radio Shack was selling products that enough people wanted, they would find the time for them. Lack of time didn't kill them. [0] http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-distribution-why http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-ti... [edit: s/nice/niche]
- delecti 12y ago
  > failure to find a nice in the modern retail world I believe you meant "niche", not "nice", and I agree with that, though I don't think it's entirely their fault. The tinkering community has become much more technical, and has also moved online, all while consumer electronics became less user-serviceable.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    Same thing happened with automobiles - the products became more complex under the hood and user serviceability is much more difficult.
- shillster 12y ago
  So you're saying unemployment is higher?
  - Thrymr 12y ago
    > So you're saying unemployment is higher? Also underemployment: there are a lot of people working part time who would like to be working full time. My main point, though, is that there is no shortage of leisure time, and that can't be a reason for Radio Shack's decline. How could there not be enough leisure time when the average American over 18 still watches 5 hours of TV a day? [0] Maybe unemployed people can't afford to shop at Radio Shack, but that's not the argument being made in the article. [0] http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watches-5-hours-tv-day-article-1.1711954 http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watch...
lnanek2 12y ago
There are still some up and running electronics stores out there like Fry's where I can build a PC from parts. If Radio Shack had stayed the same maybe they would still be in business. Instead every year I walked in they were less and less like that and more and more just prepackaged goods like cell phones and toy cars. Half the time I went in the past couple years they didn't even have whatever adapter or cable or solder or whatever I needed due to them putting all their floor space toward competing with cell phone carriers and Toys R Us.
fredfoobar42 12y ago
Bull. Shit. RadioShack hasn't catered to the hobbyist market in the better part of 20 years. I worked for RadioShack around 2001, and they'd already jettisoned almost all the parts by then. The focus was on pushing cell phones, overpriced TVs and PCs, and extended warranties for everything.
VLM 12y ago
All authors should be required to view http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1984/ http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1984/ before making conclusions. I arbitrarily selected 1984 because my dad was occasionally working part time at RS between programming contracts and it was before the arrival of Best Buy and Walmart decimated consumer electronics sales. True, there were maybe one quarter of the pages of the catalog devoted to parts. However, consider the difference in commission between a 59 cent small signal NPN transistor, vs the commission on a $349.95 police scanner or a $279.99 dual cassette deck or even a $47.95 alarm clock radio. All that stuff came from Radio Shack before Best Buy or Walmart. I think we bought a TV from Sears once when I was a kid. I grew up with a Model 3 and Coco 1, 2, and 3 with microware OS-9 and the weird pre ansi early K+R C language compiler and all that. Radio shack scanners, even some ham radio gear. The highest profit margin in the store was parts. The problem is nobody buys parts. So you make more money off one clock radio per week than 5 transistors per month. Youngsters in the HN readership don't understand that Radio Shack used to sell consumer electronics, so they think RS never did and it always lived entirely off 59 cent transistor sales. Not so. (edited to add business advice that when you have a main line and a side line and the main line goes away, that doesn't automatically mean you've always been a leader in the side line, and comically younger people are accusing RS of trying to become a best buy, when RS WAS the best buy before BB existed...) Basically RS lost consumer electronics in the 80s to 90s with the arrival of the big box stores and then it was all down hill till this year. It just took them longer to die than the typical victim of the big box stores.
- ghaff 12y ago
  As you say, there's this incredible rose-tinted nostalgia about RS that is pretty far off from reality. There may have been some ham radio communities and the like that connected with RS to some extent. But, as someone who shopped in RS starting in the late 70s, it's not a chain that I really associated with a "maker" culture in the current sense. As someone else noted, it's probably true that there was more of a need then for certain types of consumables like phonograph needles and oddball batteries that weren't easy to find elsewhere. However, most of their money came from selling generally mediocre consumer electronics. Which they could get away with because their competition was mostly either department stores (which also mostly sold a limited selection of mediocre gear) or specialty HiFi stores that many in the general public didn't necessarily think of going to.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
thejaredhooper 12y ago
I'd argue that the Radioshack's lack of attention to their role as a niche vendor (tinkerer's resource) was the true cause of their demise. As a former employee, I noticed that we continually downsized our parts section (especially in malls) until it was almost nonexistent. There were plenty of customers inquiring about capacitors and other small electric parts. We were then forced to refer those customers to a local niche store. They were trying to hard to compete with Best Buy in their attempt to sell cell phones and contracts. Poor business decision that led to them being taken advantage of by the mobile carriers who increased market share with RadioShack's assistance, but offered little in return. By the way that they treated me, my manager and my fellow employees - I'm not sad to see them go.
- mindslight 12y ago
  And how much profit would those customers have given you? Each sale is tiny, and repeat business is going to be for different obscure components, not for more of the same. With individual components being so cheap in quantity, people (hobbyists/professionals) are only looking to solve an immediate problem, and will then go place a larger order of assorted stock so that problem never happens again. Radio Shack would have had to be a lot more intelligent about which components they carried to ever function as anyone's "stock room". And that possibility is further shot as the last of peoples' uncomfortableness with online shopping fades. I think there's perhaps still some room for selling a fewer skus of large assortments (lower margin/overhead), but as part of a larger store that covers the fixed costs and provides impulse buyers thinking about getting into the hobby.
madengr 12y ago
There is no way RS can compete even if they overhauled themselves to focus on hobby electronics. Microcenter has a well stocked hobby ("maker" if you like, but I hate that term) section, but I doubt they even sell one arduino a day. Microcenters are typically located in urban areas with >2M population.
ctdonath 12y ago
Free time didn't evaporate. People stopped (broadly speaking) trying to do constructive hobbies in their free time. Radio Shack's high point was when there were only ~3 TV stations available and movies were an event. In parallel, the range of products available exploded, and the complexity of hobby-type gadgets increased beyond hobbyist capability. Used to be one could, say, go to Radio Shack and buy mundane parts to build a computer from scratch - now you can get an HD-screen wireless-broadband dual-camera tablet for a 2-digit price tag ... what's the point of building? Yes, there is a healthy & robust community of builders, hackers, & gadgeteers - but they're outside of the mainstream, different from when people at large built things out of boredom.
vibrolax 12y ago
As an electronics hobbyist since the 1960's, the only places where I have ever been able to walk in and buy parts with good service were quirky little shops run by like-minded proprietors. I do not think a corporate business model for B&M stores catering to non-mainstream hobbies has ever existed. RS's transition into cell phones, a mass market commodity, was perhaps the only possible decision that could have maintained their enormous real estate footprint. But with neither low prices nor excellent customer service, their demise was just a matter of time. The internet's capability to serve the long tail has enabled a golden age for makers, with manufacturers and distributors of every scale providing products, and forums where every manner of making is supported. What RadioShack and your local electronics part counter was ever able to supply, even at their peak, is pathetic compared with the present situation. Yeah, we can't walk in and idly browse around for ideas and inspiration. That's what your browser is for.
michaelbuddy 12y ago
when I was in the job market in '00 I attended a Radio Shack job orientation. Here's what they were after, people who would work for very low pay but who made commission on cell phones. 95% cell phones in the orientation meeting, It was all cell phones for them and as I observed for many years after. Because it was all about commission and if you didn't sell mobile phones, you were not gonna make any money. Now keep in mind I went to the radio shack because I was interested in gadgets and building stuff. And when somebody needs a simple cable replacement and they see that it's 17.99 for an rca cable that is 2.99 on Amazon, the customer feels burned by the same store that supposedly America "trusted" for 70 years. Radio Shack could have merged with Monoprice 4 years ago and kicked butt on that instead of competing with Best Buy, Toys R Us, guitar center, batteries plus and Amazon all at the same time. Now let's compare to say a home store. There are a lot of home stores, big and small. Some do better than others, many try really hard to compete with Lowes and HD by stocking really smartly. And they can keep people in through relationships. Hiring old experts who can tell you how something is done, and younger apprentice hands who can absorb a lot of info as well as lift 100 lbs into your car like nothing. (again service mindset). Also big box home stores do rentals and they also have classes. Camera shops also offer classes. Radio Shack certainly sold *some cool stuff over the years but they never could be a place I could trust or rely upon to carry anything specific. I never felt like I got a good price on anything let alone a deal. The only time I ever felt I paid regular price was when they happened to have a little cable connector, it had no price and the manager was like eh just give me 1.99. He made up the price according to what he thought it was worth, the same price I thought it was probably worth. But you can bet had it had an active sku, it would have been 7.99. Radio Shack had so many opportunities to be a provider of cool things. They could have even become a refurbish tech dealer selling lots of refurb game systems and controllers and probably done well. I mean you look at it like, what the hell were they even thinking for so long.
michaelbuddy 12y ago
What is it about businesses and not being able to shrink and grow over time appropriately. Everyone's bringing up what would and wouldn't work to sustain Radio Shack's 5000 stores. Does any business model every involve shrinking to accommodate or is it all about unsustainable growth and then bankruptcy and golden parachutes for all the guys who fail to see anywhere past 3 quarters? I just don't understand the lack of creativity when things start going south. People try to hang onto what's not working until everything fails. Look at all the spinoff retail opportunities there are. Convert these radio shacks into this, and keep these like this. Then whatever works works, works and what doesn't try again. Otherwise what is the point of selling cables for 50x markup than having cash to keep on inventing.
cratermoon 12y ago
What about the free time of kids? Do any parents even sit down with their kid and show them how to wire up batteries and lights in series, or whatever the modern equivalent would be? Do they do it in numbers that would matter, even for a nice? I'm thinking kids have so many other things in and out of school these days that tinkering never fits in the schedule.

37 points by larrys 12y ago

For ~50 years, Radio Shack rode major trends in consumer electronics quite well. Amateur radios, walkie-talkies, CB radios, home stereos, home computers, cell phones, they did it all (except interestingly PCs they didn't do so great). It was only when electronics became so mainstream, competition increased and profits became marginal they couldn't survive. It's too bad, but if we're smart instead of over-analyzing this, we'll should keep our eyes peeled for the next industries that will go under.

warnhardcode 12y ago
They did PCs fine for a little while. Tandy 1000s were popular back in the day.
- mkr-hn 12y ago
  My first computer was a display model Tandy 1000 HX. I was young and didn't know much about the internal bits, but I did know rapidly turning it off and on made a lot of neat things show on the screen. Whoops.

cylinder 12y ago

Hobby electronics? You can't even get a simple power adapter at RadioShack anymore. RadioShack is a joke.

sokoloff 12y ago

Article> many in the maker movement can’t comprehend why their beloved RadioShack is failing. Really? I would think that anyone who had tried to purchase parts for a maker-type project in their local RadioShack would understand in the hour it took the clueless clerk to point the prospective customer past the displays of cell phones, $30 HDMI cables, and RC toys to the lone, dusty cabinet of mis-filed and comically over-priced components. I have a soft spot in my heart for TRS, taught myself BASIC one summer on a TRS-80, bought every Forrest Mims engineer's notebook, loved my 50-in-1 electronics kit, and even today occasionally use a through-hole resistor from my collection of RS parts. I wish they weren't going away, but I sure as hell comprehend WHY they died...

mindslight 12y ago
Or not even needing the clerk, getting your item and observing the ridiculous prices they had on larger items. I stopped in to my local Radio Shack the other day to check if they were having the clearance yet and witnessed a 5-port 10/100 switch priced at $70. Meanwhile you can get a gigabit one at Newegg for $25 (without sale). It's almost if they took the margin they were able to obtain on electronic components and applied it to everything else in the store, managing to stay alive from the occasional sucker who thought it an appropriate place to buy tech.
- flyinghamster 12y ago
  I had an eight-port switch whose wall wart PSU had failed. I thought, "Hey, why not go over to Radio Shack and get a PSU, instead of pitching what was otherwise a perfectly good switch?" Well, as it turned out, RS wanted as much for a suitable wall wart as it would cost to buy a complete new switch elsewhere.

larrys 12y ago

To get behind paywall google "RadioShack Suffered as Free Time Evaporated" This should also work: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fradioshack-suffered-as-free-time-evaporated-1423441817&ei=7t3YVPCjJ8jnsASX8oHgBQ&usg=AFQjCNHGMnVNMPDo9_pfHPflP1JNgsk03A&bvm=bv.85464276,d.cWc&cad=rja http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

Correlation doesn't imply causation. RadioShack suffered as tech toys' guts became highly integrated and didn't yield to tinkering.

mark-r 12y ago
This. The time when you could build your own computer from parts has been long past. The 3D printer revolution is something that could have brought them back to their roots, but it's not big enough (yet) to sustain such a huge company. And unless you accidentally walked past a store, you'd have no way of knowing what's on offer - they haven't been a compelling destination for a long time too.
- nkohari 12y ago
  > The time when you could build your own computer from parts has been long past. This is simply not true. You may choose not to build your own computer, but the components are no less available than before -- in fact, commoditization has made them more affordable than ever before.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Well, you can put a computer in a box, sure. But build your own used to mean a lot more than a chip or two.
    - nkohari 12y ago
      If you mean building a computer from fundamental components, you can still do that too. It just won't feel quite as magical today as it did in the 70s or 80s because of the ubiquity of modern computers.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        I guess I meant building a computer with a chance to make real decisions. E.g. busses, interrupt architecture, memory controller etc. Now its all integrated. You use a certain chip; you need a certain chipset to support it. Your project becomes cut-and-paste of the single supported design. Why do it at all if you can't change anything significant? "I built it myself, but no, its not different in any important way from one you could buy off the shelf cheaper"?

cushychicken 12y ago

I totally reject this article's somewhat Marxist undertone that RadioShack's demise was due to Americans' lack of demand for hobby electronics - rather, just generally poor decisions and a terrible rebrand by company leadership towards selling (what they perceived to be) high margin consumer junk like TVs, cell phones, and RC cars. We live in the era of Make magazine and hackaday.com. The maker community didn't vanish. They realized they could get the stuff they wanted from the internet for cheaper, and with less aggravation. (Much nicer than digging around in a RS part drawer for the one transistor you need - but can't find - for you 330MHz transmitter build.) It was a crappy business decision from the top that just took years and years to manifest as catastrophe.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> I totally reject this article's somewhat Marxist undertone that RadioShack's demise was due to Americans' lack of demand for hobby electronics How is such an explicitly market-based argument "somewhat Marxist"?
- tlb 12y ago
  Marx predicted that tensions inherent in capitalism would cause the system to destroy itself. Radio Shack's story seems like what he thought would happen to the entire system: relentless expansion beyond its core mission, in order to serve capitalism's need for unlimited growth, caused its inevitable downfall.
  - marincounty 12y ago
    I get skewered, but in this case maybe Marx was right? I thought they had too many stores. In my neck of the woods, they had three within 10 minutes driving? This company seemed to be having trouble even before the Internet. They seemed to run the stores like it was still the 50's?(demanding ties, while paying minimum wage=grouchy employees). The website was always terrible. Marketing was terrible. Seemed top heavy with assistant regional managers, corporate big wigs, etc. My last time shopping there I bought a tube if Artic 5 to reball a faulty HP graphic chip. The price was more than 2-3 online competitors price. The nice guy helping me said, "You are not are typical customer." I knew what he meant, and I was sad. I walked past the garbage near the front entrance, the dissy array of phone plans, dodging marketing stands, and said goodby to the only lonely employee." I knew that would be my last time in a Radio Shack. (The only reason I can imagine why they loaded up the front of the stores with--crap, is because maybe we don't tinker as much as I want to think? I know you people do, but the average consumer--I've seen so many people roll their eyes when I tell them I can fix it. "Just buy a new one!" As to crafts, like sewing and leather work--I think people will get back into it, but right now it's just easier to buy because their is a lack of time. I will never forget the neck Ties and the perpetual help wanted sign though.

analog31 12y ago

Christopher Mims related to Forrest Mims?

Thrymr 12y ago
He says no: https://twitter.com/mims/status/306453610961702913 https://twitter.com/mims/status/306453610961702913
VLM 12y ago
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SmokeSecret/smoke_secret4.php http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SmokeSecret/smoke_... Not a direct descendant, anyway. Forrest is a parental role model for my own parenting, at least WRT science and hobbies. Cool dude.

Thrymr 12y ago

"Americans are too busy to tinker" is not a very plausible premise for Radio Shack's demise. Others in this tread have pointed out Radio Shack's longstanding problems and failure to find a niche in the modern retail world. I'll just add that if it's really the lack of leisure time that's driving the decline, other leisure-based businesses (travel, entertainment, etc.) would be failing as well, and they're not. According to the Economist [0], "American men toil for pay nearly 12 hours less per week, on average, than they did 40 years ago—a fall that includes all work-related activities, such as commuting and water-cooler breaks". The big caveat to that is that people with more education are working more, and those with less education are working less. That may have some part in it, but the truth is that if Radio Shack was selling products that enough people wanted, they would find the time for them. Lack of time didn't kill them. [0] http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-distribution-why http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-ti... [edit: s/nice/niche]

delecti 12y ago
> failure to find a nice in the modern retail world I believe you meant "niche", not "nice", and I agree with that, though I don't think it's entirely their fault. The tinkering community has become much more technical, and has also moved online, all while consumer electronics became less user-serviceable.
- bduerst 12y ago
  Same thing happened with automobiles - the products became more complex under the hood and user serviceability is much more difficult.
shillster 12y ago
So you're saying unemployment is higher?
- Thrymr 12y ago
  > So you're saying unemployment is higher? Also underemployment: there are a lot of people working part time who would like to be working full time. My main point, though, is that there is no shortage of leisure time, and that can't be a reason for Radio Shack's decline. How could there not be enough leisure time when the average American over 18 still watches 5 hours of TV a day? [0] Maybe unemployed people can't afford to shop at Radio Shack, but that's not the argument being made in the article. [0] http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watches-5-hours-tv-day-article-1.1711954 http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watch...

lnanek2 12y ago

There are still some up and running electronics stores out there like Fry's where I can build a PC from parts. If Radio Shack had stayed the same maybe they would still be in business. Instead every year I walked in they were less and less like that and more and more just prepackaged goods like cell phones and toy cars. Half the time I went in the past couple years they didn't even have whatever adapter or cable or solder or whatever I needed due to them putting all their floor space toward competing with cell phone carriers and Toys R Us.

fredfoobar42 12y ago

Bull. Shit. RadioShack hasn't catered to the hobbyist market in the better part of 20 years. I worked for RadioShack around 2001, and they'd already jettisoned almost all the parts by then. The focus was on pushing cell phones, overpriced TVs and PCs, and extended warranties for everything.

VLM 12y ago

All authors should be required to view http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1984/ http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1984/ before making conclusions. I arbitrarily selected 1984 because my dad was occasionally working part time at RS between programming contracts and it was before the arrival of Best Buy and Walmart decimated consumer electronics sales. True, there were maybe one quarter of the pages of the catalog devoted to parts. However, consider the difference in commission between a 59 cent small signal NPN transistor, vs the commission on a $349.95 police scanner or a $279.99 dual cassette deck or even a $47.95 alarm clock radio. All that stuff came from Radio Shack before Best Buy or Walmart. I think we bought a TV from Sears once when I was a kid. I grew up with a Model 3 and Coco 1, 2, and 3 with microware OS-9 and the weird pre ansi early K+R C language compiler and all that. Radio shack scanners, even some ham radio gear. The highest profit margin in the store was parts. The problem is nobody buys parts. So you make more money off one clock radio per week than 5 transistors per month. Youngsters in the HN readership don't understand that Radio Shack used to sell consumer electronics, so they think RS never did and it always lived entirely off 59 cent transistor sales. Not so. (edited to add business advice that when you have a main line and a side line and the main line goes away, that doesn't automatically mean you've always been a leader in the side line, and comically younger people are accusing RS of trying to become a best buy, when RS WAS the best buy before BB existed...) Basically RS lost consumer electronics in the 80s to 90s with the arrival of the big box stores and then it was all down hill till this year. It just took them longer to die than the typical victim of the big box stores.

ghaff 12y ago
As you say, there's this incredible rose-tinted nostalgia about RS that is pretty far off from reality. There may have been some ham radio communities and the like that connected with RS to some extent. But, as someone who shopped in RS starting in the late 70s, it's not a chain that I really associated with a "maker" culture in the current sense. As someone else noted, it's probably true that there was more of a need then for certain types of consumables like phonograph needles and oddball batteries that weren't easy to find elsewhere. However, most of their money came from selling generally mediocre consumer electronics. Which they could get away with because their competition was mostly either department stores (which also mostly sold a limited selection of mediocre gear) or specialty HiFi stores that many in the general public didn't necessarily think of going to.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

thejaredhooper 12y ago

I'd argue that the Radioshack's lack of attention to their role as a niche vendor (tinkerer's resource) was the true cause of their demise. As a former employee, I noticed that we continually downsized our parts section (especially in malls) until it was almost nonexistent. There were plenty of customers inquiring about capacitors and other small electric parts. We were then forced to refer those customers to a local niche store. They were trying to hard to compete with Best Buy in their attempt to sell cell phones and contracts. Poor business decision that led to them being taken advantage of by the mobile carriers who increased market share with RadioShack's assistance, but offered little in return. By the way that they treated me, my manager and my fellow employees - I'm not sad to see them go.

mindslight 12y ago
And how much profit would those customers have given you? Each sale is tiny, and repeat business is going to be for different obscure components, not for more of the same. With individual components being so cheap in quantity, people (hobbyists/professionals) are only looking to solve an immediate problem, and will then go place a larger order of assorted stock so that problem never happens again. Radio Shack would have had to be a lot more intelligent about which components they carried to ever function as anyone's "stock room". And that possibility is further shot as the last of peoples' uncomfortableness with online shopping fades. I think there's perhaps still some room for selling a fewer skus of large assortments (lower margin/overhead), but as part of a larger store that covers the fixed costs and provides impulse buyers thinking about getting into the hobby.

madengr 12y ago

There is no way RS can compete even if they overhauled themselves to focus on hobby electronics. Microcenter has a well stocked hobby ("maker" if you like, but I hate that term) section, but I doubt they even sell one arduino a day. Microcenters are typically located in urban areas with >2M population.

ctdonath 12y ago

Free time didn't evaporate. People stopped (broadly speaking) trying to do constructive hobbies in their free time. Radio Shack's high point was when there were only ~3 TV stations available and movies were an event. In parallel, the range of products available exploded, and the complexity of hobby-type gadgets increased beyond hobbyist capability. Used to be one could, say, go to Radio Shack and buy mundane parts to build a computer from scratch - now you can get an HD-screen wireless-broadband dual-camera tablet for a 2-digit price tag ... what's the point of building? Yes, there is a healthy & robust community of builders, hackers, & gadgeteers - but they're outside of the mainstream, different from when people at large built things out of boredom.

vibrolax 12y ago

As an electronics hobbyist since the 1960's, the only places where I have ever been able to walk in and buy parts with good service were quirky little shops run by like-minded proprietors. I do not think a corporate business model for B&M stores catering to non-mainstream hobbies has ever existed. RS's transition into cell phones, a mass market commodity, was perhaps the only possible decision that could have maintained their enormous real estate footprint. But with neither low prices nor excellent customer service, their demise was just a matter of time. The internet's capability to serve the long tail has enabled a golden age for makers, with manufacturers and distributors of every scale providing products, and forums where every manner of making is supported. What RadioShack and your local electronics part counter was ever able to supply, even at their peak, is pathetic compared with the present situation. Yeah, we can't walk in and idly browse around for ideas and inspiration. That's what your browser is for.

michaelbuddy 12y ago

when I was in the job market in '00 I attended a Radio Shack job orientation. Here's what they were after, people who would work for very low pay but who made commission on cell phones. 95% cell phones in the orientation meeting, It was all cell phones for them and as I observed for many years after. Because it was all about commission and if you didn't sell mobile phones, you were not gonna make any money. Now keep in mind I went to the radio shack because I was interested in gadgets and building stuff. And when somebody needs a simple cable replacement and they see that it's 17.99 for an rca cable that is 2.99 on Amazon, the customer feels burned by the same store that supposedly America "trusted" for 70 years. Radio Shack could have merged with Monoprice 4 years ago and kicked butt on that instead of competing with Best Buy, Toys R Us, guitar center, batteries plus and Amazon all at the same time. Now let's compare to say a home store. There are a lot of home stores, big and small. Some do better than others, many try really hard to compete with Lowes and HD by stocking really smartly. And they can keep people in through relationships. Hiring old experts who can tell you how something is done, and younger apprentice hands who can absorb a lot of info as well as lift 100 lbs into your car like nothing. (again service mindset). Also big box home stores do rentals and they also have classes. Camera shops also offer classes. Radio Shack certainly sold *some cool stuff over the years but they never could be a place I could trust or rely upon to carry anything specific. I never felt like I got a good price on anything let alone a deal. The only time I ever felt I paid regular price was when they happened to have a little cable connector, it had no price and the manager was like eh just give me 1.99. He made up the price according to what he thought it was worth, the same price I thought it was probably worth. But you can bet had it had an active sku, it would have been 7.99. Radio Shack had so many opportunities to be a provider of cool things. They could have even become a refurbish tech dealer selling lots of refurb game systems and controllers and probably done well. I mean you look at it like, what the hell were they even thinking for so long.

michaelbuddy 12y ago

What is it about businesses and not being able to shrink and grow over time appropriately. Everyone's bringing up what would and wouldn't work to sustain Radio Shack's 5000 stores. Does any business model every involve shrinking to accommodate or is it all about unsustainable growth and then bankruptcy and golden parachutes for all the guys who fail to see anywhere past 3 quarters? I just don't understand the lack of creativity when things start going south. People try to hang onto what's not working until everything fails. Look at all the spinoff retail opportunities there are. Convert these radio shacks into this, and keep these like this. Then whatever works works, works and what doesn't try again. Otherwise what is the point of selling cables for 50x markup than having cash to keep on inventing.

cratermoon 12y ago

What about the free time of kids? Do any parents even sit down with their kid and show them how to wire up batteries and lights in series, or whatever the modern equivalent would be? Do they do it in numbers that would matter, even for a nice? I'm thinking kids have so many other things in and out of school these days that tinkering never fits in the schedule.