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RadioShack To Close 1,100 Stores
wjcofkc writes "The decline of RadioShack has been painful to watch, and now CNN Money reports that they will be closing 1,100 of their stores, totaling 20% of their brick and mortar presence. RadioShack has also publicly admitted its current stores are out of date and in need of a massive overhaul. But the number-one culprit has been a continuous slide in sales down a steep slope in the area of mobile device sales. A few years ago, in a bid to expand its customer base, RadioShack made a bid to return to its roots as a hobbyist electronic components retailer. Apparently the extra traffic hasn't been enough to make up for their failings. The article mentions that some of their stiffest competition is coming from online retailers. The big question is, in order to ensure their survival, would RadioShack be better off continuing to phase out their brick and mortar presence while making substantial efforts to expand as an exclusively online retailer?"
Well, what ELSE would they do other than pay high school dropouts to sell cell phones?
Close 1100 stores, claim that you have a quarterly "profit," and grab the golden parachute for the next exec to take over!
The number of jobs that will be lost in the store closings was not disclosed, nor were the locations.
There isn't a place for a Radio Shack that won't commit 100% to being the hobbyist shop they started to be, or an online retailer that isn't just a smaller version of Mouser or DigiKey. We already have little rat shacks everywhere on the Internet that sell soup-to-nuts, we need a retailer that is passionate about their place in the market. You can't beat the big boys on price - they can always undercut you, and if needs be - they can give product away for free until they drive you out of business. You need to be able to provide service and product that the larger competitors can't or won't - so far, Radio Shack doesn't seem to be able or willing to do it.
Frost post from a Tandy 1000
Let it die. Please.
I stopped visiting RadioShack in the mid-90's because everything in it had their fucking name stamped on it in big ass bold letters. I wanted an alarm clock but every single one had "WE'RE RADIOSHACK BITCH" written on the front right next to the time. I hate this in much the same way I hate car dealers putting their dealerships logo on the car I want to buy. I actually made a salesman scrape it off and have it repainted at their expense before I purchased the vehicle.
Radio Shack would be better off just closing all of their stores and firing everyone, as that would surely make them heroes in the eyes of the American business community.
Nobody in America cares about electronics any more. You could stage a broad daylight bank robbery perpetrated by clowns armed with handgrenades and you'd have a below average chance of getting the average American to look up from their phone.
Anything that leads to massive waves of layoffs, abandoned stores, landfills brimming with brand new discarded products, crying, pain, suffering, bankruptcy, investor fraud, theft, arson, graft, embezzlement, female store staff getting their asses pinched, CNN specials, Piers Morgan scolding us five nights a week and a government bailout is always the better option.
Close 'em all.
Radio Shack reached it's geek peak probably in the late 70's. I remember as a kid pushing the orange button on a Model 1 and hearing those 8" drives clack.
has been that it doesn't get enough hobbyist parts and charges too much for them. Part of the problem is that most of their stores have moved inside of malls, which require extra fees to maintain a presence within. The bulk of the problem appears that their leadership is out of touch with the quickly changing reality over the past few years. They're like Sears Robuck: they set a goal and intend for it be stuck to for years, like they were able to do back in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's, before the internet came along and they could get away with it. It's been a good 2 decades since the internet took a foothold and it's sad that they haven't managed to keep up with it. This is the price that they are paying for not seeing the big picture. Radio Shack used to be an awesome place to go to get any small electronic component at a somewhat decent price. Inflation hasn't helped their business model, either.
It's hard for a brick and mortar store to compete on price and convenience, and those are both pretty important to potential customers. Adding in a human element of expertise is a hard sell when more and more people can turn to google to get the answers they want.
That being said - stocking last minute items could provide a niche. Sometimes you need a new keyboard, battery, or PSU stat, and even next day shipping isn't an option. The question is - is that a frequent enough occurrence to sustain a store?
Radio Shack is already 100x bigger than that niche could ever support, regardless of how much they commit to it.
Radio Shack ought to get back to being the electronic hobbyist store. They'll survive selling Arduinos , Raspberry Pi's, 3D printers, etc... Not over priced headphone cables and lack luster phones. Hows Beta?
This is my signature.
They also need to hire people who actually understand the hobbyist side of electronics. Most of the young kids in there these days know how to tweet and use their little mobile pre-built gadgets, but have no idea what a resistor is and how it works. And they don't have the inclination to learn it either. Everytime they ask "Can I help you" I respond "I seriously doubt it. I'll find it myself."
Radio shack has always been one of those stores I walk into looking for parts and come out realizing I'm only getting it online and I have to wait a week. What they should do is repurpose the stores to become what they always should have been, a hacker haven. Fill it with knowledgeable people who know how to make custom electronics, and foster people who want to build things but don't know how. Problem is... its just too late. Would be cool to see someone like sparkfun or something buy them and do something like that.
You can't beat the big boys on price - they can always undercut you, and if needs be - they can give product away for free until they drive you out of business.
They don't have to _beat_ (say, Amazon) on price. Consider randomly chosen nuvi 2797LMT GPS.
299.99 at Radioshack
269.99 at BestBuy
256.49 at Amazon
You know a store is in trouble if they cannot even compete with BestBuy (which is usually overpriced too)
The big question is, in order to ensure their survival, would Radio Shack be better off continuing to phase out their brick and mortar presence while making substantial efforts to expand as an exclusively online retailer?"
Not likely. They have no particular advantage in the online space aside from a recognizable (if tarnished) brand name. What they really should have done was to expand their catalog sales back in the day and become a distributor like Digikey or Mouser. I suppose they still could though they are behind the curve. They've gotten into cell phones but no one really thinks Radio Shack when they think cell phones. They sell batteries but there now are specialty battery stores that usually have a better selection and better prices. They don't have the scale or the expertise to compete with Amazon online and they are too unfocused to have profitable retail space. I can't really think of anything where Radio Shack would be my preferred shopping destination.
Radio shack has been trying to be all things to all people and when you do that you don't serve any of them well. They have expensive real estate, small square footage, small selections of products, high prices and unclear strategy. Their advantages are that they are fairly well known and have a lot of storefronts. That's a pretty thin advantage these days. I'm thinking Radio Shack might be a pretty good stock to think about short selling.
Went to Radio Shack 6 months ago for a replacement mini-usb cable for programming a Logitech Harmony remote for my parents (they lost theirs in a move). They wanted $30 for a 3-foot cable. At that price they deserve go to out of business. Waiting 2 days for Amazon to deliver your cable is inconvenient, but saving $25 to wait 2 days? That's a no-brainer for most folks. If instead of focusing on gouging ignorant consumers (they're not alone in this, I realize) instead of providing reasonably priced products with excellent service, they've done this to themselves.
Based on that experience, why would I even think of looking for hobby electronics at this store? So I can pay $10 for a capacitor available for 30 cents online?
Everytime they ask "Can I help you" I respond "I seriously doubt it. I'll find it myself."
2edgy4me. Do you shift your fedora when you say that?
I worked at RadioShack around the turn of the century. IMHO back then they had poor management at the cooperate level. Inside of listening to the stores and stocking things the customers were asking for (like blank CDs) they chose to stock things no one wanted (and overcharged for it). They claimed there higher prices were because they had better trained employees. The employees didn't see that money. And the training program was a joke. Every employee had to take about 15 multiple choice tests. But every store had cheat sheets and no one really learned anything.
At one point their managers filed a class action lawsuit against them. Some of the executives had to give dispositions and they were posted online. After reading them I could tell that either they had no idea how things worked in the store or they were lying though their teeth.
Around the time I left they had started putting part in "bins". And they started sending in secret shoppers. If an employee didn't ask every customer about a cell phone AND a satellite dish they were fired. Even before that turnover was like a fast food place.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
They seem to want to focus more on the cell phone end of things though. I was in a Radio Shack a month ago, and 3/4 of the store was phones and phone cases and cables and crap it seemed. What they had for actual connectors and tools was poor and expensive...
Do you know how a resistor works?
"a continuous slide in sales down a steep slope in the area of mobile device sales"
Mmmm... okay...
What's that in English?
Some of the francise stores are more like what Radio Shack used to be as far as targeted toward hobbyists and/or electronics gadgets, though I haven't found one in years with employees who were knowledgible about their hobbist stock. The main thing that has ruined Radio Shack for me over the past decade is that the employees are more interested selling cell phones and batteries than anything else in the store. What once would have been a 10 minute jaunt to go grab something basic (solder, connectors, bread board, etc) has become a 30-40 minute frustration as you wait behind someone getting a new cell phone.
There are not enough people in the U.S. who would use an electronics hobbyist shop like that. Certainly not enough to support 5000 stores. Maybe 1 store per 250,000 people. And on that front they are competing against Frys and Microcenter, both of whom have more space dedicated to electronic hobbyist stuff in their stores than all the space in a typical RS store. If they had a section for breadboard/through-hole parts and a section for surface mount parts, I'd go to them more than I do now.
That being said - stocking last minute items could provide a niche. Sometimes you need a new keyboard, battery, or PSU stat, and even next day shipping isn't an option. The question is - is that a frequent enough occurrence to sustain a store?
Absolutely not. Walmart stocks enough of that stuff to fill that need. Radio Shack simply straddling multiple strategies and not doing any of them well. They are simultaneously trying to supply batteries, electrical components, cell phones, toys, and a few other niche items from small and expensive stores where it is relatively expensive and inconvenient for their customers to visit them. I honestly cannot think of anything Radio Shack sells where they would be my preferred shopping destination.
The local (Columbus, Ohio) Micro Center (from wiki: founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1979 by two former Radio Shack employees) has a much better selection of hobby stuff from my experience 2 weeks ago. And then there is Digikey, Mouser, Allied, etc., just a day or 2 away if you want to pay for the shipping (which sometimes makes up for the bloated Rat Shack pricing).
I would never go to Rat Shack for a cell phone or satellite TV.
Maybe batteries, but the Kroger next door had a better selection of coin cell Lithiums for odd sizes like what goes into my Toyota remote.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
went in there reciently to get a part. any thermister. didn't care the specs. even would have torn one out of something. not one in the store. lets stock basic sensors!
http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-how-radioshack-still-in-b,2190/
"I seriously doubt it. I'll find it myself."
Wow, Mr. Neckbeard, you sound like the life of the party. How about you drop the superior attitude and apply for a job there if you know so much? Or will that take time away from playing EVE Online?
But of course you won't do that. Have fun with your ham radio you fucking nerd.
Last time I went into a Radio Shack I was surprisingly impressed. Not only did they sell small electronics (LEDs, audio connectors, voltage regulators) which are hard to find retail, but they also sold Arduinos and "modern" hobbyist stuff. My 5-year-old's got the gimmies at the array of science projects like hydrogen rockets, RC vehicles, and etc. I said to myself that Christmas gifts would come from here now, instead of a more generic toy store. Yes, they were expensive, but I've come to expect that from retail.
By contrast, our local electronics and hobby shops continue to sell LEDs, radio antennas, and vacuum tubes -- but the staff have never heard of an Arduino and would never sell a finished good like a rocket or RC car.
They still seem to be a cell phone store that happens to stock some overpriced parts and some arduino bits. The staff has no training they do know how to push overpriced cellphones and plans.
Granted the clearance sales on some bits have been great ($5 GSM shield anybody)
No sir I dont like it.
Radio Shack is already 100x bigger than that niche could ever support
And, having been around and watching in the 1970s and comparing to today, I wouldn't be surprised if the hobbyist electronic niche is 100X time smaller today than it was then.
I went to two different Radio Shacks lately with no luck - once to get a 4-pole 3.5mm minijack to RCA AV cable and another time to get a TOSLink optical cable (again needing a 3.5mm mini-plug on one end.) I realize these are not super common cables, but in each instance the sales people had no idea what I was even talking about. I also don't understand the whole Radio Shack mobile strategy; I can go just about anywhere to find a mobile phone and pay outrageous prices like theirs. With the whole maker movement, I would think they would sell Arduinios and Raspberry Pi boards. I would also think I could go in there and get a small selection of hardware (motherboards, CPUs, Video Cards), but again, I don't think they have stock like this...
I was once denied a job at Radio Shack because I had been trained as an electronics technician. It was explained I knew too much about electronics and they didn't want me talking electronics with customers. The manager said they were trying to move the company away from that.
Radio Shack just makes me cry when I go in there now. Having one small cabinet with nothing more than about a dozen different resistor values and toggle switches priced at $8 a piece is not a "return to your roots"
When Radio Shack was doing well they sold some of the best, and even most unique Stereo equipment you could find. The first surround sound I ever heard was in a Radio Shack and that was a good 5 years before I saw it anywhere else. I could take in a parts list and the clerk would tell me to come back in a few days and he'd have my order ready.
There IS a market for Radio Shack and they could do well, but they need to get out of the mall where rent is so high and start stocking real stuff again. How about offering project boxes with custom silk screen or etching right in the store? I'd pay $100 - $200 for such a service. How about an array of knobs and such to make your project stand out? 3D printers and supplies? Arduino supplies... how about workshops on coding for them? Come on, this isn't that hard.
There's a strip mall near me and all within about 5 blocks you can find Woodcraft, Harbor Freight, Northern Tool, Home Depot, AutoZone, Hobby Lobby and a fabric store. THAT is where Radio Shack needs their store... not next to Bannana republic for gods sake.
They're best business model would be availability and location. When I was in college, I could go to 2 different electronics stores that were less expensive, but if I needed only 2-3 components, Radio Shack was the place to go. More expensive, but faster to get to. They closed near 20 years ago in Canada, after years of only being the shadow of themselves...
They tried to compete with the big stores (Futureshop and Bestbuy) and failed. I remember in the '80s they had so much nice stuff, their 200-in-1 kits and Armatron come to mind...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
I've been going to Radio Shack since...well, since it was a radio shack. Back in the days of breadboards, resistors, capacitors, transistors and these new things called integrated circuits that were going to change the world. When they had the light beam spanning the doorway that rang a buzzer when someone walked in.
Sadly, I don't think they can return to those roots. Their stores have moved from the low-rent strip malls to the high-priced shopping mall locations, and I think the overhead is too high to sustain business selling $.99 parts and Raspberry PI's. I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see them being able to pull out of this.
And where, pray tell, is this mythical Fry's store near Miami, Orlando, Tampa, or Jacksonville... let alone West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Naples/Ft. Myers, Sarasota/Bradenton, Brandon, Lakeland, Ocala/Gainesville, Daytona/Titusville, Tallahassee, Pensacola, Ft. Pierce/Port St. Lucie, or the other areas with at least a quarter-million people within 25 miles? We *should* have Fry's... but unfortunately, we don't.
Probably not a survivable fall and others are talking about their failings better than me. I'm not much of a hobbyist, but I had a few fun little projects I've worked on and gone in there maybe 10 times in the last couple years. They seem to have taken the homogenized tech shop approach of selling what everyone else makes money off of. I waited in line for about 5 minutes for a couple signing up for cell service once and the the huge electronics components sections I remember from 20 years ago was now 2 short aisles; the rest of the stuff was toys, gadgets, and batteries you can get literally anywhere.
This happens to a lot of industries; including TV channels. One exec sees someone pulling 20% returns on X and decides to incorporate that into their business model while dropping product Y. After a while, they do it so much they just lose their identity.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Well, in my town there are at least 4 Radio Shacks, so you're right about that... but all of them are little more than cellphone Kiosks. I'm not sure what brilliant mind they had that thought they'd make money by putting a cellphone Kiosk in a mall next to the Best Buy, Apple, Verizon, and ATT stores... not to mention the dozen or so little booths in the middle of the mall... but it's clearly not working.
I think a better headline would have been "Radio Shack still has at least 1,100 stores".
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
You need to be able to provide service and product that the larger competitors can't or won't - so far, Radio Shack doesn't seem to be able or willing to do it.
Not true! The in-person sneering and overt superiority complex you get from radio shack employees is far more effective at discouraging budding hobbyists than any "use search" dismissal in a newby electronics forum. Oh wait...that sounds counter productive to their business....
I agree. When they tried to change to a mobile phone retailer, they didn't do well. Their purpose became muddied and second class. When I did go into one for a cable, connector or part, it was my last resort if I wanted it today. They often did not have it or had it for an absurd price. It would be costly now to change back to their roots, but I don't think there is an alternative if they intend to survive. If they return to a hobbyist store, they should do it with all their heart and purpose....or go back to selling leather.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
They tried to grow the niche, but missed. Rather than being RC & phones (what they were the last time I was in), they could have branched into home automation and other tech items that were not mainstream, but hobbies. And hopefully large enough to support the business. But by the time they went back to roots, I'd already moved on. So they missed their chance. They alienated their "loyal" base, then abandoned their phones & RC model. They were left with nothing.
Learn to love Alaska
Retail electronics parts stores are dead. Even in Silicon Valley, we barely have any left. Digi-Key used to have a minimum order of $25. But they dropped that a few years ago. You can order one resistor from them and it will ship the same day by first class mail, in a small padded envelope. This pretty much solved the parts problem for people who know what they want.
The Digi-Key site can be overwhelming to hobbyists. Want a 100 ohm, 1/4W resistor for through-hole mounting? Radio Shack has one type. Digi-Key has 225 different types. That's part of what keeps Radio Shack and Jameco in business. If Digi-Key or Mouser ever sets up a hobbyist-friendly front end site to their inventory, the last need for the little guys will disappear.
As it is now in our tiny city I can't get any electronic components of any kind on the weekend without going to The Shack. Fry's is 70+ miles away and our local "real" electronics shop is only open 8-5 weekdays.
I suspect the market just isn't there to cater to the couple of dozen of us in town that would benefit from the kind of shop I'd like to see. The local electronics component shop really only sells to businesses, they tried to open 8-12 Saturdays but not enough people came in to pay the light bill much less the tiny hourly rate they pay the counter people. I love the options online but it's just not convenient.
It all starts at 0
http://www.theonion.com/articl...
Despite having been on the job for nine months, RadioShack CEO Julian Day said Monday that he still has "no idea" how the home electronics store manages to stay open.
"There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," Day said. "You wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn't have this desk to sit behind all day."
Too bad, though. I thought they had something planned after seeing their awesome new ad.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
No, that's why he needs someone in Radio Shack to help him.
Learn to love Alaska
If Monoprice buys them...
1.) Monoprice has a brick-and-mortar presence. They're well known for having cables super-cheap, which would be impossible to sustain at retail, but even if they sell 6ft. HDMI cables at $7.99 each, they'll still be cheaper than anyone else within a 50 mile radius AND pretty easily make up the difference.
2.) Monoprice is basically vertical at this point. They only need to sell first party gear, so they don't have to "pay" the third party manufacturers in order to have the merchandise around.
3.) Monoprice may not sell capacitors and resistors, but their merchandise has a better overlap with Radioshack than basically anyone else who would buy the retail space.
4.) With retail space, Monoprice can beat Amazon at their own game - carry the iPhone chargers and HDMI cables and 3.5mm aux cables and basic home routers and security cameras in huge quantities to make the money from the masses, and then for the oddball request for a SAS/SATA breakout cable, buyers get $1.99 overnight shipping to any Monoprice store.
To me, that would be amazing. Alas, I can dream.
"I seriously doubt it. I'll find it myself."
That has to be spoken with the Comic Book Guy voice.
When I saw their The 80's called and they want their store back commercial, I thought it was pretty funny and clever, but I also thought that the real problem is that they should go back to their 80's version. I recently needed to replace some blown-out capacitors in an LCD TV so I went to "The Shack". The selection they had was pretty pathetic and not what I needed. Thinking maybe it was just this store, I went to another one (both stores not located inside of a mall) and they had the exact same electronic components cabinet with the same measly selection of capacitors. It was disappointing because I used to enjoy going there in the 70's through 90's (except when they used to hound you for your address every time you wanted to buy a stupid fucking watch battery). I think I still have my battery club membership card stuck in a drawer somewhere.
As far as I'm concerned, Radio Shack's business model has long been to sell overpriced but inferior merchandise. In many areas it is the only place one can physically go to by some electronic parts, so it does get some traffic even from people who are reluctant to buy from them. If they were to go on-line only, I expect that they would soon be out of business completely, a result that I would not feel bad about because just maybe someone else might try to fill the void.
Even the simplest things bought from RS seem to be plagued with defects. I've bought cables from them and found them intermittent and once I bought a simple 2 to 1 telephone jack and, when my phone wouldn't dial when connected through it, I found it was wired wrong. Their electronic component "substitutes" are frequently improperly spec'ed. And as to price, I recently saw a Raspberry Pi kit in Radio Shack, it was priced well over $100.
May these stores just be the first, I'll be glad to see them all go.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Radio Shack is worthless. Every time I go in there looking for something, they never have it. The last thing I went in for that that I surely thought they would have (but didn't) was a 1+ amp micro-USB power adapter for a Raspberry Pi. They're more interested in selling shitty phones to idiots than stocking things that are actually useful.
Do YOU know how a resistor works???
You have questions, we have blank stares....
Hear, hear. Every switch I've ever bought at Radio Trash has had the plated connectors corrode in no time making them useless. Their other components are too expensive to even consider unless it's an emergency (though it's been a long, long time since I've had an emergency that required me running out for resistors, capacitors, etc.). To be fair to RS, they do, or at least did, sell audio/video cabling that were priced far less than the ridiculous prices that the local Best Buy was charging for the Monster brand -- the only kind they were selling at the time. (If memory serves, BB once wanted to charge me $10/foot or more for Monster cables.) On the other hand, I walked out of the local Radio Trash in disgust while looking for a replacement USB cable for my daughter's MP3 player. For the price they were asking I could have very nearly bought her a brand new player which, of course, would have included the cable.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Hobbyist components aren't consumer items. Selling them in consumer packaging in a consumer store doesn't work.
Set the stores up like auto parts or appliance repair stores. Lots of shelves in the back, a couple guys with computers up front. You tell them what you want, they go back and get it for you. They maintain the parts bins, no kids moving stuff around, no bent leads.
Also allow online orders then you go pick up your package with 16 different resistors, 4 connectors and 20 LEDs all in a bag ready to go.
You don't want these in malls or consumer strip centers, they can be in low rent districts. Hobbyists are more at home there anyway. And (broad stereotyping alert) women won't go in them wherever they are.
Kind of like Digi-key with local pickup.
Stock seems to vary a lot by location, at least near me.
I've gone in there a handful of times in the past year or so, and had the same experience every time. They always almost have what I want. They'll have some rare/old cable adapter, but it'll be M/M instead of F/F.
I think your suggestion for what they could sell is a great one, and I'd be far more likely to go back if they made the switch. Clearly there are companies who make money in that space. But I think it'll be hard to convince the Radio Shack execs/investors to do so, because it's a smaller market overall. Like most failing retailers, they want to turn it around around and start growing -- mere stabilization and acceptance of lower revenue is an admission of failure, in their eyes.
They're best business model would be availability and location. When I was in college, I could go to 2 different electronics stores that were less expensive, but if I needed only 2-3 components, Radio Shack was the place to go. More expensive, but faster to get to. They closed near 20 years ago in Canada, after years of only being the shadow of themselves...
They tried to compete with the big stores (Futureshop and Bestbuy) and failed. I remember in the '80s they had so much nice stuff, their 200-in-1 kits and Armatron come to mind...
Except you forgot to mention that they did come back in an odd way as "The Source" now in Canada as of 2009. Only thing I find that's annoying is their name brand "Nexxtech" seems ok for a few things such as batteries, alarm clocks, USB Drives, and cables, adapters, etcetera, but they don't actually print product number's on the packaging which means if you want to look by stock number online then go to an actual store in the mall you end up hoping it's not in the wrong spot.
And, here in Canada too the focus is more on accessories for cell phones, followed by TV's, then a smaller section for computers and small sections on the walls for all the various little items. I remember radio shack used to have a hell of a lot more for converting or adapting darn near anything.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
I would agree. People don't want to fix that expensive [something electronic], when they already know everything is surface mount, and they don't have the skill to fix it. The cost for the replacement part and tools is higher than the cost of the replacement unit.
We are in a disposable society now. Throw away your old electronics and buy new ones.
There are fewer hobbyists now. I was at one of the Radio Shacks that actually sells components. I spent probably 2 hours doing parts conversions in my head to see what could work, and redesigning parts, because virtually nothing I wanted was in stock. Even for 4 transistors, I spent time going through what they had to find what was "good enough", versus what I wanted. Part of that time, I was restocking their stuff, because things I was looking for were tossed back in the wrong drawers. Not just one compartment off, they'd be in the wrong rack entirely. They tried to help, but they knew more about the cell phones and batteries, than they knew about the components. At least one guy working there knew what a transistor or resistor was. We had a decent talk while I shopped for parts. When I couldn't find something (like heatsinks for the transistors I settled on), he checked the other local store inventory, and then ended up telling me I had to buy it online.
I was looking for another component the other day. I don't remember what it was, but it was something fairly simple. Their site had "Web Only" right the photo. The same for every potentially compatible part.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
There is a very simple solution to their problems. Their sales have tanked because they are now nothing more than a glorified cell phone and toy store. If they would actually go back to selling electronics components and the other items that made them famous, people *might* return. There was a time when they made one of the best 2 meter handhelds on the market. Cleanest signal, ease of use ... Then they decided to jump on the cell phone band wagon and they were off to the races to see how fast they could become THE cell phone store. Every time I go in there, the sales associate will try to sell me a new phone or some kind of phone gadget.
At one point I applied for a position as a sales associate. I made it through their psych test with an excellent rating indicating that I was a perfect candidate. Where I went wrong was on the 2nd interview when the regional manager was asking me about upselling etc. I told him that I would not try to sell someone something that they didn't need just because it made the store more money. I didn't get the job.
If they would jump off of the cell phone band wagon and actually stock electronic components and quit trying to make people buy things they don't need or want, they might stand a chance.
Blame the MBAs. Every time they take over a niche business, they want to turn it into the business model of the largest generic vendor out there. The Science Channel is no longer science, but looks like every other cable channel. Mini wants to sell bigger and bigger cars. Radio Shack is no longer electronics bits and pieces, but wants to be every other electronics vendor. A successful small business is never enough. The greedy buggers only care about their suicidal rush to the top.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Give 'em a chance. Just rattle through what you want and why, so you can see the dumb look on their face. :) Sometimes you can hear the audible "WOOSH", without them saying anything. It's quite amazing.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
What they should do is move into the bleeding edge of tech, sell things like quadrotor kits, 3d printers and associated parts/consumables, DIY electronics stuff like Arduino, Raspberry PI, etc.. Even books. Become the local hub of all things NEW and experimental, like they were in the 70s and 80s. Nobody else is doing that right now on a large consumer scale. Sure keep the cell phones and shit as basic money makers too, but fill the other 90% of the store space with cool new tech, not dvd players and shit Host hobbyist DIY events like Home Depot does, you bring your kid in and build some simple electronics project. Act like you actually give a shit about electronics.
When I go to Radio Shack I want to see what cool electronics you have or kits I can look at, not cell phones or batteries. They have great stores for those and Radio Shack isn't one of them. I remember my dad telling me how you could go in an get all the parts to build a computer (this was the 1970's and 1980's). Do that but with electronic kits such as Arduino, Rasperry Pi, Beaglebone, etc.. Have raw parts available (LED's, transistors, resistors, etc.)..
My post on the CNN article...
---
Hi, Radio Shack.
Blockbuster called, and they want their stupid back.
If you don't include the 900 franchise stores, you're about to close almost 25% of your corporate stores because you're too tied to your existing process playbook for running a store to be able to see where it's hurting you.
Clearly your 900 franchise stores are able to profitably stay in business.
This is *exactly* what Blockbuster did when they closed their corporately owned stores, even though they had the undeniable evidence of the franchise stores proof by existence that it was possible for a video rental store to remain profitable, despite the online movie services and cable and satellite company's "on demand" offerings.
It was almost enough to make me want to go into the video store business (and I am not kidding!).
I know this is a really radical idea, but have you considered *asking your franchisees* what practices they are engaging in, and what processes they have in place, such that they are able to remain profitable, while your 1,100 stores aren't?
And then, you know, throwing out your own, unprofitable practices in favor of their profitable ones?
Do you guys really just never hire systems engineers, or do you not view your retail operations as systems?
They probably had them, the employees just didn't know it. You have to find the catalog number and tell it to them.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
...as a 11 year-old kid riding my bike to the local RS, actually sitting in the display window in the strip-mall, and pounding code into a TRS-80 (around 1976) and saving the BASIC programs on a cassette drive, so i'll always have a soft-spot for these guys. the guys that used to work there would tell me i helped sales as people would walk by, see a kid on a "computer", and think to themselves "well, how hard could it be to use one of those if this kid is doing sorta-cool stuff on it?"
however, like someone else here said, it's been painful to watch the slow and steady decline of this American institution (yes i said and stand behind that characterization)...they have always been totally overpriced but often were the only game in town for getting components and such.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Honestly, they'd be better off getting rid of the people entirely. If they can't compete on cell phones and consumer electronics, they should really just switch over to being a vending machine for resistors, cables, adapters, etc.
Everything is already in baggies, they could have a touch display that showed info from the website and could do chat with a centralized customer service. They could substantially reduce their square footage without sacrificing product variety.
The bigger problem was the loss of knowledgeable staff. They should have expanded in to cameras not phones, they would have had more of a chance there. Now all the staff that knew what they were doing are gone though and instead of "You've got questions, we've got answers." It's "You've got questions and our stares are even more blank than the idiots at Best Buy."
AJ Henderson
Radio Shack is awesome. I mean, the *ideal* of the concept...in execution now it's still good but could be improved.
I make suitcase boomboxes & in our startup phase Radio Shack's ubiquity was absolutely crucial as we were working with builders of varying tech ability across several states. If a builder needed to ship by deadline & was short a few wire clips or broke a capacitor Radio Shack was our savior!
Fry's is great but it's not the same retail scale.
What really bothers me about this news is that its clear now Radio Shack Inc. is horribly mismanaged. The closing of the brick/mortar stores as a response to online competition is ridiculous. It's two different lines of business.
'the internet' is not a replacement for a brick & mortar store...they are two **parallel** methods of business
brick & mortar wins 'the last mile' competition every time...plus it provides an employment opportunity for a young techie...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Years ago I could go into a Radio Shack with a broken piece of equipment or questions about some needed part and the employees had the knowledge to help me. It was a place to go and check out all the new cool gadgets. But they changed, the staff no longer knows anything besides how to work the cash register and there is nothing impressive in the store that makes me want to go check it out and possibly buy something. If I have to do the research myself to figure out what I need or how to fix something then I'm going to just order whatever i need online cause it will always be cheaper. They should be selling raspberry pie's and custom build kits, robotic kits (not kids toys) and all sorts of cool stuff for us nerds to play around with. Instead they tried to sell cell phones when phone carriers all have their own shops right next door. Why would I buy a phone from radio shack when I can go next door and get it from the phone carrier who is the one who will be providing me with support on my phone. What are they now, a tech store (don't think so), a phone store (fail), a kids toy store? Nobody knows what their brand stands for anymore. I agree with other posters, go back to being a high tech hobbyist store and get staff that are as excited to play/build the gadgets as their customers will be.
If RS gives up their brick and mortar stores, I'll say adios. As an online-only retailer, they couldn't possibly compete with Mouser, DigiKey, etc.
If they keep their brick and mortar stores, they need to put specs on the parts they sell. I needed a couple of snap-on ferrite chokes recently and got them at a local RS store. The parts didn't give the first inkling of the range of frequencies they were supposed to block.
How hard can it be to add "blocks RF at 5MHz and above" (or whatever) on the package?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I'm beginning to wonder now if this will affect "The Source" stores here in Canada which is what Radio shack for all intents and purposes became around 2009. They too try to push the cellphones and accessories along with some electronics and computers and what seems like smaller sections of pegboards with all the smaller parts that Radio shack was always known for.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
RadioShack reminds me a lot of how CompUSA was run into the ground during its final decade of business. You basically had upper management throwing random ideas at the wall hoping to see what sticks (not much). The truth is, companies like these fail because the they are constantly trying to hitch themselves to the latest "bandwagon" rather than focusing on their core business.
With CompUSA, it was a result of them trying to become a BestBuy clone. In doing so, they relegated their core business of computer parts to one or two small isles of video cards, and their tech services devolved into being middle men shipping laptops out for warranty service. They chose instead to focus selling printers (because the ink and cables were high margin), TV's (because they wanted to be like BestBuy), cameras (because most could only be returned to the manufacturer back then, bypassing the store's bottom line or a while), and a shitload of laptops (but only because they could sell TAP on them). They replaced that stuff with such a wide variety of product that sometimes it felt like they had absorbed one of the generic Indian retailers that hangs out in mall hallways selling cheap RC copters, or Sega Genesis emulators. There was even a laughable attempt by the store manager to try and sell this new HD VHS system as being the next big thing, and how the AV quality was better then either HD-DVD or BluRay.
The biggest sign of trouble, however, was TAP (Technology Assurance Program, if I remember correctly). It was basically your standard high-margin warranty extension that most places offer. You can tell when a company is truly screwed because they begin to view these "products" as the only viable source of revenue, and begin training staff to push them as hard as possible. There were times where employees were basically instructed to use fear tactics to sell TAP, where they would play out scenarios for the customer like "You don't want to open this new monitor and find out there's a dead pixel do you? We can't return it if you don't purchase TAP!" Of course you also people like the best salesmen claiming TAP covered practically everything from flooding to divine retribution, when in reality it was basically an extension of the manufacturer's warranty.
The reason I bring all of this up is because the same patterns happened with Circuit City, and now RadioShack. They've confused their core business model with newer shiny opportunities, like cell phones, and service plans. It's fine to expand your business with those things, but it should never push your bread and butter out of the spotlight. RadioShack can branch out all it wants, as long as its stores continue to offer the core services (hacker parts, electronics, and knowledgeable staff) front and center. Since it isn't doing that, it will become another CompUSA.
>There are fewer hobbyists now.
There are fewer electronics hobbyists, just like less people are building steam-engines, but there aren't fewer hobbyists in general. The fun is in programming these days, rather than soldering together electronic components. We still break out the soldering iron, but the software is the larger part of current-day hobby projects.
Seriously. I've got two words for Radio Shack:
Monoprice and Digikey.
I went in there to buy some lame battery (CR123 or whatever) and ended up buying like a 30 pack online for cheaper than their ONE battery. Same deal with cables, electrical components, etc.
Oh gee, you started selling Arduino? At the size of Radio Shack, why the fuck can't they get within every $10 of the price of the board online? FAIL...
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
I see what you're saying, but I'm a retailer (among other things) and it's not about "hobbyist components"
Your Auto Parts example is actually the same thing. Auto parts = Components
I think Radio Shack should take your suggestion, precisely **because** it allows them to stock **more** of those components, and offer them in any ammount not a pre-packaged ammount. It allows for more stock in the same ammount of space.
Radio Shack & Auto Zone can afford the overhead of stocking all those specialized parts because of **economy of scale**
if you have 3000 stores & suppliers set up, the scale makes it profitable...don't put them in shitty low-rent neighborhoods though?!? that's horrible advice...also, they mall locations are not that much more than a regular storefront. Its a good choice, b/c they make alot of money on consumer electronics! Radio Shack should stock more high-end stuff...not exit the market!
the online aspect really is just a matter of logistics...look at Sears' online store...its' actually really good & prices are lower than Amazon etc on some things....Radio Shack could do that AND take your advice AND keep their stores open!
Thank you Dave Raggett
And, if the store is quiet enough, you can hear the hamster wheel squeaking.
My mother used to work for Tandy years ago, and as a result I spent a lot of time in Radio Shack stores.
Now I can barely stand to go into a store, because they have annoying sales people who insist on telling you about everything you look at, but can neither answer questions nor understand why you are asking them to go away.
To me, Radio Shack became "cheap RC toys and cell phone accessories" a very long time ago. And I'm not sure I think there's anything they can do to turn the tide of being thought of as just a low-end electronics chain which doesn't sell anything you can't get at Wal Mart.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My last experience buying something from Radio Shack on-line. I bought a model-specific cellphone battery, and after finally receiving it (shipping was slower than advertised), I discovered that they had sent me the wrong battery. I checked the order confirmation and I had ordered the correct one, they had simply shipped me the wrong one.
How to get this fixed? If I wanted to get the battery I really ordered, I would have to buy another one. And the useless one I had? I had to wait to get an RMA label mailed to me before I could return it for a credit card refund. Guess what? I never got the RMA label!
Service experiences like that teach customers to be former customers.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
You're my hero.
No seriously, you really are. You talk down to kids hardly making minimum wage because they're not experts on a niche hobbyist field? And hiring EE students to do the job of answering questions your local RS probably gets about once every three weeks would do what for their customer base exactly? Wow. You're just The Man!
Sorry but even if RS had sold every Arduino and Raspberry Pi sold in the US it probably wouldn't have put a dent in their cash flow woes. It's really just not that big of a customer base. The only people I know of who dicker with that kind of thing put about 50 dollars into it and lose interest or they're old neckbeards who are still playing with reel-to-reel decks and demand very specific components which they need to import from Japan.
Around here all the "Radio Shack" stores because "The Source"
Those struggled too for awhile but seem to be doing better these days. I actually recommend them to people quite often for small stuff like cheap USB sticks, MMC cards, or USB mice. A $9.9/16GB USB stick is good enough for Joe Average to dump a backup of his/her documents onto.
They also do a lot of cellphone stuff, and have various little gizmos that I suppose some people buy, and their salespeople seem to be slightly less of a brainwashed PITA drone than the people at Best-Buy/Future Shop (seriously, my last foray to FS almost made me want to throw up when I heard the sales guy talking to some poor schmo about how the Win8 interface is "revolutionary" because it lets you your PC like a tablet, with apps).
No, you're wrong. I saw a Raspberry Pi kit in a Radio Shack just last month. But at a price well over $100, it was just an insult to anyone who knows what they should sell for.
The company has for decades destroyed their reputation. If there were a RS store and an independent next to it selling similar things, I would gladly pay a bit more at the other store for similar items just to avoid buying it as RS. Not that I would have a high expectation that I would be getting something better at the other store, but at least I wouldn't be expecting things to be defective because I bought them at RS.
Decent science and electronics kits and related items are getting rarer and rarer. Even the people who say that they "built" their own computers now actually are only appliance users who just stuck together a dozen or so pre-assembled parts and never touched a soldering iron, likely don't even own one. A real brick-and-mortar store that catered to true hobbyists would be hard pressed to survive anywhere except extremely densely populated areas with above average technical customers. I don't see how they could make it as a national chain with thousands of locations, even if they had not built a reputation for selling defective items at extremely high prices.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
That is easy. It converts electron thingies to heat!
Basically have people be able to bring their children to the store, buy kits for like $5 each, and have them put it together in the store. Or teach people who to use a lot of the equipment, etc.
I went to Radio Shack to buy an electric motor as a part in a robotic arm. I also needed a pulley wheel to attach to its rotating post. The salesperson said they only carried motors, and she didn't think it was possible to actually attach them to anything. I asked her why she thought people would buy motors that couldn't attach to anything. She made a noncommittal noise and began busily examining her own inventory of phones. One of us did not belong in that store, and sadly, I think it was me.
Radio Shack is already 100x bigger than that niche could ever support, regardless of how much they commit to it.
Who cares how big you are if you can't turn a profit. Radioshack used to be profitable when they filled a small niche.
I think the real problems happened when radio shack went all Cell phone, and not even Radio Shack Cellphones, but generic brands that you can get anywhere.
Back during their hayday, sure you got components and hobby stuff, but you also got the Tandy and TRS/80's their own line of computers, which was handy at the time, as you could build your own electronics to add to the serial and parallel ports and make fancy stuff like D/A converters, to play music.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Radio Shack, it's like Best Buy if you don't have a Best Buy around, feel like paying 300% markup for basic items like a cable, and a lot less selection. I can't think of a way out for Radio Shack. Maybe start with changing their name to something not so out-date sounding.
There isn't a place for a Radio Shack that won't commit 100% to being the hobbyist shop they started to be
It's important to note though, that even in its glory days Radio Shack was much more than a place to buy blister-pack transistors and soldering irons.
They sold metal detectors, HiFis, shortwave receivers, tape recorders, CBs, walkie-talkies, "flavor radios," speciality batteries - Tons of high-margin stuff that supported the hobbyist who spent two hours in the shop pouring over resistors.
Flip through this RS catalog from 1975 to see what I'm talking about -
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1975/
It's not like they can go back to that business model now.
They should have changed their business model to match their business setup
#1 order on line for parts
#2 pickup in store using their existing delivery network to "ship for free"
They could have had 1 week delivery. Essentially 1 or 2 days for most places near a distribution center. They had weekly or 2x weekly shipments.
Rather than a limited in store inventory. That
a) frees up store space
b) reduced individual store inventory
c) gets a much wider array of parts
d) drives foot traffic
The hobbyist niche didn't fully support them in the old days either, with something like 80% of retail revenue coming at Christmas time and Radio Shack selling a ton of RC toys and such. Other times of the year, non-geeks looking for cables, adapters, etc. were a major market for them. Their slogan "you've got questions, we've got answers" was accurate - their employees got raises for passing tests in various fields, so they would have the answer. Any average Joe could come in saying "I want to hook both my DVD player and my game console to two TVs ..." and the Radio Shack employees would steer them to the products they needed, cable, A/B switches, etc.
For the niche that defined the brand, that's still there, it's just shifted a little bit. The same guys, like me, are still interested in similar stuff. It's just shifted from ie short-wave radio to 3D printing. If each Radio Shack location (or some of them) had a 3D printer in the store, that would bring traffic from the same people who used to buy resistors and antennas there. We're not building homebrew computers anymore, but we sure might want some servos to hook to our Raspberry Pi.
Video game stores aren't still trying to sell Atari 2600 games, but they haven't changed too much - they are just selling the new games. Radio Shack could do the same. Not by selling (only) the same resistors they sold 30 years ago, but by adding what today's geeks want, stuff for rPi and microcontroller systems, and whatever else is most popular on makezine.com.
Radio Shack used to be a pretty awesome place. Back in the 8 personal computer revolution, they were for sure a force to be reckoned with. Compared to the other guys at the time, they were the only ones who had their own retail distribution channel. They had a variety of models with different capabilities (and little cross-compatibility!), and was a great little shop to visit when you're a nerd kid in the 80s. Beyond computers, they had a "Battery Club" where you would get a free battery every month!
They also had walls of common electronics components... 555 timers, resistors in exactly the impedance you needed, prototype boards, power supplies, lcd numeric displays... Completed products were the exception, components were the rule. Not to mention educational materials and experiment kits! http://imgur.com/XZyJf
Talking about how things were better "back then" can be cliche, but sometimes it's true.
Squash
they could have branched into home automation and other tech items that were not mainstream, but hobbies
Sure, but how many stores could that business model support? One per town, probably, not one per mall.
It's called Flori-duh for a reason.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Why not buy it online ship it to my house instead?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
His show canceled. We should be deporting him soon. He is all yours.
The Radio Shack I knew and loved, growing up, was one of the early computer stores, among other things. The TRS-80 line of 8-bit computers, despite being much maligned by proponents of competing brands ("Trash 80" as they liked to call them), were solid, reliable and capable computers in their day. I *still* know several people who have their old TRS-80 Model 3 or 4 computers in good, working condition to this day. (If you purchased that optional dust cover Radio Shack used to sell for them, and used it religiously, the machine might even LOOK almost like new!)
The parent poster is also correct that Radio Shack home stereo equipment was pretty good stuff, all in all. Like every brand, they sold a few "duds" too, but products like the old Minimus 7 die-cast metal bookshelf speakers were even critically acclaimed in magazines like Stereo Review. (They eventually got renamed Optimus 7, with the 77 being a larger wattage version with about an inch larger woofer.) I believe some of their component stereo receivers were made for them by Pioneer, but designed custom for Radio Shack so not just identical to Pioneer models for sale elsewhere.
Radio Shack used to also be one of only a few really good "go to" places for things like police scanners, weather radios or shortwave radios. Sure, other brands were arguably "better" but were typically only available by mail order or at specialty shops. At least with Radio Shack, you could recommend a particular one and know anyone could run down the street and grab it at their nearest store. The availability of some of these also meant readily available hardware modifications. (I remember downloading instructions on how to cut one capacitor off of a board in one of my Radio Shack scanners to unlock the ability to scan a whole portion of the frequency spectrum that was otherwise locked out. Pretty cool enhancement for nothing but the cost of my time to open it up and cut one thing.)
When they tried to change into a mini Best Buy type of store, they really went downhill fast, IMO. I guess that was an attempt to appeal to the masses, who were less interested in electronics projects and hacking, and more interested in buying off the shelf accessories and gadgets. But too many retailers already did that better than Radio Shack ever could with their smaller stores.
At this point, I agree that R/S may need to cut back and close quite a few stores -- but it could do well to focus the remaining ones on electronics for true hobbyists and electricians, IMO. Drop the prices so they're really competitive, especially on items like ethernet cabling and jacks. Carry a full line of quality tools like phone linemen's handsets, punch-down tools and "fox and hound" toners/probes, but sell them below the high prices of places like Greybar! IMO, there's no room to make any money selling computers anymore. R/S just needs to step out of that area -- other than maybe stocking a few common items like USB memory sticks or SD cards. But definitely go back to carrying a full line of soldering irons, solder remover tools, maybe an R/S branded oscilloscope ....
...30 years ago.
Unfortunately it has just become a steaming pile of shit since then. They buy up the cheapest chinese garbage and try to sell it at ridiculous prices. The stuff often breaks well before its time due to poor manufacturing. The sales staff have been trained to all but force feed you their extended warranties, even for things that shouldn't even need extended warranties like batteries.
As we globalize more and more, it becomes difficult for outfits like this to scam the public. People are researching now, and they're getting selective about what they buy and where they buy it. There's no room for shitholes like radioshack anymore.
they could have branched into home automation and other tech items that were not mainstream, but hobbies
Sure, but how many stores could that business model support? One per town, probably, not one per mall.
Just enough to be profitable. It's better to have 1 profitable store than a million unprofitable ones.
...they even sold cell phones. Getting "shopped" was a pretty common occurrence. They were easy to spot because they always bought 3 - 4 completely random unrelated items after being in the store only 10 minutes.
I worked there about 5 years ago and the company was hanging by a thread with cell phone sales. My boss was crazy. He would have me stalk customers through a very small store and shove cell phones down their throats. I didn't stay long for fear my boss would come to work one day and kill everyone in the mall. Also he had this stupid saying "Bad monkey, no banana for you." Well yeah he said it to an African American customer that was paying his boost mobile bill one day. After a minute of awkwardness, the two customers decided my boss was just retarded and they were cool. True story bro.
There used to be two of them relatively close to me. In their last un-expansion, they were going to close the one that was second closest to me. But a highway had been upgraded to a freeway by the other one, and they asked the landlord of the shopping center if their sign could be moved higher so you could actually see it from the new highway. Cheap-ass shopping center (which lost its anchor stores in the time since) said no. So RS closed both of them. The next distance tier from where I live includes one that's across the street from a Fry's.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It's cheaper to go online AND pay for shipping than to go to radio shack, even for 1 capacitor.
Dicksmith in AU and NZ used to be like RadioShack. They stopped employing people that knew their products, and started employing school kids that can barely operate a cash register, they stopped selling all the interesting fun stuff, and just turned into a shop that pushes cheap TVs and printers. I'd say if they hadn't of done that, then they would of closed down years ago.
The local shack here in Fairbanks Alaska still stocks a reasonable amount of stuff, and components, thou some of it is on the pricey side. And this not so good example - I work in IT at whats probably the largest employer in town - I call them up one day, tell them where I'm calling from and that I need a dozen DVI to display port adapters and got some silly price of $30 each, we ordered them from monoprice for a fraction of the price, and waited a couple days.
they could have branched into home automation and other tech items that were not mainstream, but hobbies.
Yeah, but The Sharper Image went out of business, too.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Cameras wouldn't have worked. Ask Ritz or Wolf Camera. Aside from photography stores in larger cities catering to higher end prosumer/professionals (think B&H or Adorama), and Best Buy, that business has all but disappeared from retail.
I had to pick up a single DL DVD to burn an OS X install disk for my stepfather. The cheapest they had was $15. Just for shits & giggles, I asked if they had any arduinos. The Uno was like $35 bucks. THIRTY FIVE FUCKING BUCKS. Fuck you Radio Shack I hope you die an even more painful death than what you're experiencing right now.
I've been encouraged by what I'm seeing in my local Radio Shack. I just dropped a couple hundred bucks in there, bought a Beaglebone Black, some RGB LED strips (with weather proofing), a nice little USB battery/charger that has enough umph to drive the BBB, and some other odds and ends.
Going to run over there today and pick up the "tv be gone" DIY project kit for a buddy of mine for his birthday.
Also lots of Arduino stuff. I also see on their site that they've been making a bit of an effort to have blog posts about controlling some of the stuff they are selling, but it's a far cry from adafruit or the other maker sites.
They still have a long way to go if they want to really compete in that market.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
They would need to really work on their web site first! Go try to find an electronic component...or probably anything. Their web site is terrible.
I wish they would bring back their catalogs too...
Bring back the free battery customer loyalty program.
You know a store is in trouble if they cannot even compete with BestBuy (which is usually overpriced too)
True. Plus, on top of that, Best Buy has a price match with Amazon, and unlike some of the price matches scams I've seen through the years, it's easy to do, and requires no manager involvement. You show them the price on your phone at Amazon.com and as long as it's sold BY Amazon (and not a third party), they match the price instantly.
Sure, with tax it's higher overall, but this is about as reasonable as possible.
About 40 years ago Radio Shack was actually a place worth going to for electronic components and tools. As a fledgling electronics hobbyist I was grateful to have somewhere to buy parts, especially after the local TV repair supply store closed, and the nearest alternative was 70 miles away and I didn't drive. Back then Radio Shack's selection was decent, and the prices were high but not terrible. Even their audio equipment was often pretty good too. The stores were popular, and the staff were actually somewhat knowledgeable. (Back then an "electronics store" was a place to buy electronic parts, not TV's and stereos).
Here in Canada, Rat Shack stores became The Sores by Circuit City some time around 2005, but long before that they had become annoying places to shop at, with a poor selection of crappy over-priced components, and arrogant staff who knew far less than they thought they did. On the one hand I'm happy to see the beast put out of its misery, but on the other hand I'm sad to see a company that was so important to me and to my eventual career die such an ignominious death.
Requiescat In Pace, Radio Shack.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I don't know about other folk. But when I saw RadioShack's SuperBowl commerical, I cringed.
Timothy remarks that "a few years ago" RadioShack was trying to get back to its roots as a hobbyist outlet. I don't know how anybody could reconcile that idea with the incredible disdain for the past demonstrated in that commercial.
Trouble is... what differentiates RadioShack? Why would I bother going THERE for cell phones? As they've tried more and more to become like everyone else, they've succeeded in undercutting and destroying any reason I'd have to go there first for anything. I'll still end up at RadioShack when my shopping research shows they have what I want less than others. But to go there on a lark? Not these days.
I recently needed a new 123 lithium battery for my EDC flashlight. Radio Shack wanted $13 for the store brand, while I found an Engergizer at Target for $7. With that kind of pricing it is no wonder that they are doing poorly.
I also remember a few years ago noticing that you could buy a USB cable for close to $30. Or, you could buy a complete USB hub, with a similar cable included, for the same price. Gee, which one is a better deal?
I have actually been pleasantly surprised to see them sell Arduino and Basic Stamp stuff recently. While the prices are a little high, it is nice to be able to grab that kind of thing locally if you need one quick.
I had kind of hoped that they would get back into amateur radio (ham) stuff too. With cheaper Chinese hand-held radios available for as little as $30 (Baofeng is one of the biggest manufacturers), they could have the stuff re-branded and possibly get back into the business with low cost and low risk. The quality is not fantastic, but is generally good enough, and might establish themselves as a destination for amateur radio operators again.
I remember back when I was a kid, Radio Shack was one of my favorite places to go, and I even enjoyed going over the catalogs to see what cool things they used to have. Now, other than a smattering of hobby stuff (but not much), all they have is the same cell phones , DVD players, and digital cameras that everybody else has, but with more cost and less selection. Other than the occasional adapter or Arduino, there is absolutely no reason to go there.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Yeah, but you could probably sort it descending by unit price, and the most expensive item would be suitable for use in a space probe and probably still be cheaper than what Radio Shack would want. Or just hit page down once and find really nice stuff for a reasonable price. If the specs aren't demanding you don't need to worry about whether it is pulse-withstanding, flame-retardant, moisture-resistant, and kills zombies in a 5' radius.
Sharper Image sold gadgets, and expensive ones at that. The problem with "The Internet" is that you get low prices and unknown quality. Wal-Mart succeeds because they sell low-end junk, but with a good return policy, and internal QA. If Radio Shack would have been a China mart with QA and a return policy, they could charge 2x the Internet price for most things and still steal lots of business from the Internet shops.
You don't try to beat the Internet on price. You try to get close and focus on support and availability (a 5 minute drive, vs a delivery).
Learn to love Alaska
In a time where technology is king, many technology stores are booming. My local computer store (MicroCenter) checkout line is usually a 10-15 minute wait... with 6 cashiers. And Radio Shack can't make it? It very simply because they don't get technology. In a way, they are trying to compete with the BIG consumer stores like Best Buy... I just don't see it happening. I think they should rip out the stores, replace them with a maker space and charge people to come in and work on electronics and other hobbies, all while selling parts at a premium. If stores that help you cook your dinner can succeed, then I think this idea would work. Hire a few young tech geeks to man the store, and stock it with some fun electronics, and you may have a very good winning combination. Only concern is that the stores may eventually be too small... I say cross that when it happens.
They don't stock much in the way of do it yourself or hobbiest near me. But if I want yet another place to buy a cellphone, or cellphone gear, they devote close to half their store to that.
Also lots of Arduino stuff.
If it would have been the Radio Shack of old, they would have been the ones to invent the Arduino But they're not. All they are now is a bunch of stuffy managers making a death bed repentance.
Everything you mentioned can now be found online for cheaper, and everybody is now used to getting it that way and probably prefers not having to drive to the store and having it delivered to the doorstep anyway.
Amazon will probably be able to pick up the slack with same day shipping in the near future for a lot of these items. But even then I don't mind waiting two or three for the USPS.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
... to look for a mini-DIN stereo extender. $25. I turned around and walked out in less than a minute.
Among other issues THAT's Radio Shack's problem. Massive mark-up on $2 junk items.
And I wouldn't be looking toward electronics hobbyists to be their savior. I've seen every specialized electronics store in my area fold in the last 5 years and they had been in business 25+ years. Their customers went online to buy parts - much, much bigger selection and lower prices, of course - and only came into the store to talk shop. They still had knowledgeable clerks in the stores but there's zero momentum to purchase in the store.
A shame, too. It was always fun to go through the bins of liquidation, weird, one-off, outdated items that no longer have mainstream sales points. I miss the discovery part. There's still some cool places in the Bay Area to go trolling for old hardware (Weird Stuff Warehouse, HSC) but there's enough critical mass to keep those places going. Even larger cities struggle to keep a specialized store like that open.
Frankly I'm surprised Radio Shack hasn't long since gone out of business. In a way I have to give them credit for keeping the party going this long. Most B&M retailers are struggling to find their way in an Internet-centric commerce world and RS is hardly the only one. Best Buy and similar retailers have struggled mightily to try to compete with Amazon and I don't think they've been very successful.
Do you live in the Austin area?
Charles Wyble System Engineer
Actually around the holiday season Radio Shack mall stores would outperform the strip mall stores by miles because of all the RC toy sales (and gift giving). And people would also always buy a pile of batteries to go with them. During the same time, people who would show up at the strip malls were people looking to buy a pack of resistors or fuses.
Malls can charge higher rent because of the demographic and foot traffic in a mall far outstrips that in a strip mall. Sales people always wanted to work in malls because they would easily get more commissions.
However, if you worked in a strip mall, you always worked for minimum wage.
I welcome ex-Radio Shack employees to chime in, as I know that is not far from the truth.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
"The big question is, in order to ensure their survival, would RadioShack be better off continuing to phase out their brick and mortar presence while making substantial efforts to expand as an exclusively online retailer?"
YES! Simply put, hobbyist and Mobile Phone seekers can just as easily go online to buy their parts/phones instead of dealing with brick and mortar stores. With RS's stock and supply connections, they could easily transition into online sales. The usual online retailers (Newegg, TigerDirect, etc) will give them a challenge, but they have no-where near the intricate electronic parts that Radio Shack does.
Flip through this RS catalog from 1975 to see what I'm talking about
Well, now I know where I got all those Christmas presents from. I counted at least a half-dozen things I had as a kid.
and bought a radio. Imagine that!
This.
One problem is that they didn't REALLY "go back to their roots" as a Hobbyist store. They still pushed cell phones and stereo equipment almost as much as before. At least in the stores in my area. The actual component electronics and chips were still relegated mostly to a back corner: one set of drawers and a section of wall hangers.
Yeah, but you could probably sort it descending by unit price, and the most expensive item would be suitable for use in a space probe and probably still be cheaper than what Radio Shack would want. Or just hit page down once and find really nice stuff for a reasonable price. If the specs aren't demanding you don't need to worry about whether it is pulse-withstanding, flame-retardant, moisture-resistant, and kills zombies in a 5' radius.
Very close. At Radio Shack you get 5 resistors for $1.49. They're just ordinary 5% carbon resistors. At Digi-Key, a flame-retardant, moisture-resistant, MIL-SPEC, 1%, failure rate 0.001% resistor will cost $0.39 each. If you go all the way to the bottom at Digi-Key, the very last resistor matches Radio Shack specs. It costs $0.00494 each. Flame-retardant, too.
If you want an Arduino Uno board, Radio Shack wants $29.99. And they're out of stock on line. Digi-Key's price is $28.57, and they have over 4000 in stock. Radio Shack is selling only the older non-surface-mount version. Digi-Key has both, and the newer version with surface-mounted parts is only $26.80. So even on pure hobbyist stuff, Digi-Key wins.
So the demise of Radio Shack isn't going to inconvenience electronics hobbyists.
Exactly. Electronics is now just a support for software. You don't design electronics so much as specify what completed system you want to program. Electronics is a mature field now, the only place I see new challenges is in power electronics, either in cars/EV in general, and HVDC transmission, and I guess solar PV home systems. Everything else? Dead and buried. Take a look at 20 year old electronics magazines: I'd wager 90% of the proposed hobby projects are either useless, too expensive or simply not relevant anymore these days. When was the last time you needed a 100KHz sawtooth generator, even if it had a digital readout of the frequency? Who cares? Anything you needed a 100KHz sawtooth wave for is probably software-defined nowadays, or deeply buried in a 1$ microcontroller (PWM)...
I know I don't even use my oscilloscope much anymore, and I don't understand why some people seem so convinced you absolutely need one. To beginners, I always recommend a good power supply and to not waste time making your own. Get one that works first. Then you need a decent multimeter that at least checks diodes, and maybe capacitor and frequency measurement. Then you need one or two USB based instruments like a logic analyzer and a I2C/SPI/JTAG master. Then add a ICSP programmer for microcontrollers. Of course, a good soldering iron with fine tips, some fine braid, a bit of fine tin/lead solder. (It wets better).
There you go, small, simple, cheap, compact.
Oh I know, like last time I said this someone always comes up with an anecdote of the variety "but I had a signal that didn't work and the oscilloscope showed it had the wrong logic level!"
To which I say read the damn datasheet. You'll learn more and end up knowing your device more. Scopes are a tool of a bygone era where things like television sets had a few signal paths with one or two very complex analog signals snaking around a few active components where having all the information from one or two channels of an analog scope made sense.
"But but but!"
But nothing. Electronics has fundamentally shifted away from the basics of the R, the L and the C and is now about the ONE and the ZERO.
(Disclaimer: For the vast majority of hobyists I believe I am right. Naturally for the professional engineer working in a corporate environment things are different. But even then, there aren't that many 'scopes anymore. It's about the DCA.)
Mostly random stuff.
Either your math is off (way off) or your standards are too low. 30 years ago it had already gone to hell. Selling defective crap at inflated prices. Selling improperly spec'ed replacement transistors and similar parts. Sure, I'll grant you that they have managed to raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation since then, even when most other electronics prices are dropping, but it had already become a place to avoid 30 or even 35 years ago for anyone with a clue.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They get paid minimum wage... yes, it's either minimum wage or commission, whichever is higher, and the latter is rare.
Seriously, what do you expect. They don't hire electronics engineers.
Radio Shack has ALWAYS been overpriced! I worked there many years ago and have seen the markup. they've never been competitive on price, except for the odd sale or two. How they managed to stick around this long is beyond me.
what they need to do is hire SALES SUPPORT folks (aka non-com folks that are paid to know PARTS).
I know for a fact that a Million+ store can get a 30% boost in sales just by having a skilled Sales Support guy.
(oh and btw im halfway through a CET cert and have a decent background in AC/DC electronics Semi kicked me in the nodes but...)
In some of this stuff you want to be able to tell a youngling "Rush This You Should Not, Hard You should study or risk Magic Smoke"
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I can corroborate this story. Only the mall store employees ever made enough to earn commission, except at Christmas, when they slashed our commission rate as a "bonus" or something.
One time we ordered stuff from Digikey at work and decided to tag on additional parts 20 minutes later. They told us that they typically ship within 15 minutes, but they would try to tag the extra parts to the same order. We were quite impressed. That actually took a bit of effort to talk to my boss to set up an account with them.
Funny that a few years I went into my old boss who is working for a contract manufacturing. He told me that their shop are using Digikey as their supplier for all the last minute stuff.
Retail store fronts simply are not needed at all for electronics any more. They simply are not going to be able to stay in business with a guy walking in once a week to buy a pack of resistors.
The thing that Radio Shack needed to do like days of old was not necessarily sell parts, but rather innovate. Like what others dealing in electronics have. It's not that Digikey dropped their minimum (though I never thought that was big deal) but that they had every part being made, and then built a robot system that could pull parts faster, more accurately, and cheaper than humans. Something Radio Shack should have spotted, if they weren't more than a bunch of salespersons worried about bagging the next cell phone sale.
It was, and remains to be, beyond them.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
" A few years ago, in a bid to expand its customer base, RadioShack made a bid to return to its roots as a hobbyist electronic components retailer."
The problem is that they only did this in *some* stores, often in a "back room" which wasn't immediately obvious, and since they had already turned into a generic phone store, people just don't think of RadioShack as being a place to buy components.
If they hadn't abandoned their roots in the first place, they would not be having this problem, so fuck 'em.
#3 pick up same day at the warehouse.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Several years back, I need an XLR gender changer in a hurry. When I found a local RS, I asked the just-out-of-high-school clerk for one. He looked at me like I was asking him for some sort of sexual favor. He had no idea what XLR was, let alone a "gender changer." I knew then that would be my last trip to Radio Shack, and it was for many years.
With the RatShack gone there will likely be no brick and mortar stores left for purchasing electronics parts in most neighborhoods. I like your idea that somebody will step in to fill the space but I really doubt it. In my part of the world there were some pretty nice parts stores back in the 90s. One by one they have closed. It isn't that they weren't making any sales though, they closed when the owners retired. Nobody seems to want to take them over or open a new store. I guess people just assume the market isn't there.
The Rat Shack isn't filling the gap our missing stores left behind now. Yet.. nobody else is stepping up to do it. Why expect somebody to magically pop up and fill the gap when the Rat Shack closes? At least they had some parts one could buy without waiting a month for it to ship from China.
That's true of any components store. I still know of some succesful ones that are not named Radio Shack. Why can't the Rat Shack do whatever they do?
...wouldn't know what Radio Shacks roots were if they were beaten about the arms and head with it. They successfully killed and buried it way back in the early 00's by tanking the Tandy Corp name.
Why isn't Radioshack opening Makerspaces and selling components to people for all that stuff?
"get back to your /root @ Radioshack!"
done! I just solved your whole marketing budget. Now open stores that aren't in malls using cheap space in half-abandoned strip malls, hire some high school/college geeks who like to play with electronics, and PROFIT.
-
I went in for some female wire connectors and found random packs of wire connectors that never had more than 4 of the specific size/type I needed and they were mixed in with other useless types. Price on the bag was $12! I went to Amazon and found a bag with 200 of these little connectors in them for $6. That's the last time I have been in one of their terrible, terrible stores.
Here's an idea. F*ck all the consumer BS products that they can't compete with walmart on (cables, batteries, cell phones, etc). Fire everybody that doesn't actually know about electronics and building things. Stock the stores with awesome stuff like robotics kits and little computer boards and such. But thats not enough... Put in work benches. Turn the stores into maker-spaces. Have classes for all ages on making robots and spy devices and little computer controllers and such. Sponsor local schools that have engineering programs or create such programs. Make it so that when the next kid walks by the store in the mall his mind is blown when he sees robots and blinking lights and kids with their parents making cool shit. I never go into Radio Shack anymore. My son wouldn't even notice the store. But I guarantee if we saw THAT Radio Shack I wouldn't be able to tear him away from it and I'd probably drop some serious change there.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
For years I've thought that a place like Hobby Lobby would be an ideal handler for the Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects. Carry some shields and the associated components and put in a small corner of the store. It could provide a better experience than Radio Shack and wouldn't be any more niche than their hobby rockets.
The one part of RS which has performed flawless is the "How to tick off the customer division." Recently I went to a store with the exact name of the part from their web site. After being told by the clerk that he had never heard of it, I handed him the RS part number. While he was busy with the computer, I found what I was looking for on the wall beside the cash register. After I handed him the money, he stood there holding it and launched into a 4 minute, by my watch, spiel on cell phones, trade-ins, etc. I twice politely said that I was not interested, but it had no effect. And they expect return business?
"Electronics has fundamentally shifted away from the basics of the R, the L and the C and is now about the ONE and the ZERO."
Obviously not an RF/Microwave engineer, but to each his own.
1) Lower the prices on components
There is no way a brick and mortar store is going to compare with component prices on places like Ebay or Deal Extreme. Even competing with Mouser and Digikey is probably asking too much. But.... the Rat Shack's prices on components are frequently 100 or more times the price of purchasing the same thing online. Having a part in hand when you want it IS worth extra money. It is rarely worth THAT MUCH money!
2) Compete with Arduino
Hey, it's awesome that they cary Arduinos and various pre-built shields now. They should continue that. But... most people aren't going to be frequent repeat buyers of Arduinos. They are great for getting ones feet wet. But.. as a hobbyist who makes new projects frequently (the kind of people who come in and buy often) they are too expensive. An Arduino is good for re-using one Arduino in many temporary projects. Or it's good for early prototype stages of a permanent project. It's overkill to actually leave one in whatever you just built and go buy another for the next project.
The Rat Shack shoudl be selling their own brand of cheap Boarduino. AND... they should sell raw Atmega chips (preferrably with the Arduino bootloader on them). AND they should sell little clock parts bundles to go with them (crystals and caps). Unpopulated Boarduino PCBs where the user can populate just the parts they need would be awesome too.
3) Enough with the little 2-component baggies! The packaging probably costs more overhead than the part inside!
For the most common resistor and capacitor values just sell them on tape. (At least do this for 1k, 10k ohm, .01, .1uf and some value electrolytic (not too critical))
You want to really get some attention? Don't even bother counting them, sell them by weight. Just have big rolls of the stuff in a spool. Let the customer rip off the length they want. Yes, I know, that method will totally screw with their inventory records. So what? I'm only talking about super common 1/4 watt resistors and a few values of super common capacitors. They are what, .01 cent a piece from the factory?
For extra bonus points, do the same thing or similar for a couple really common transistors (2n2222 and 2n2907) and a rectifier diode (1n400... something or other). This should reduce overhead.
Maybe other, less common parts could be sold in tape too but rather than have big spools pre-cut them in lenths of 5 parts or so. Sell those at considerably lower price than the crappy little 1 or 2 part baggies are marked today.
4) PCB fabrication, 3d printing service. Those would be pretty cool things to have too. There is no way Rat Shack can put them in so many stores. They could centralize it but don't just put it in one place (I guess it would be Texas) and make every store's customers wait for the shipping.
Instead, start building "Super Stores". There should eventually be one per metro area. Customers can go into a "Super Store" and get their PCB etched with in an hour (just like the old 1 hour photo stores). Or.. they could have something printed, maybe they can even watch it print!
Customers who go to a non-super store could still submit a design to be printed at the nearest Super Store and shipped.
5) Keep closing stores
Sorry, I don't want to say this. There really are too many though. I can think of 4 near where I live, I bet there are others I am not even aware of. That just isn't necessary.
I very much am, actually, but how many hobbyists you see working with stubs, VNAs, Smith charts, and printed distributed element filters? Compared to the amount of people working with Arduinos, PICs, Atmels, Pis, etc.? I have a spectrum analyzer and a 3.9GHz sampling scope. So what? I had more fun programming a stupid 25 cent PIC to control a LED light than I get from looking at sine waves, you know?
We got dumb looks. I stopped going in radio shack when the guy told me they didn't sell food when I told him I needed to order some chips.
Close all the stores and re-open them as Starbucks or Subway. There doesn't appear to be a limit on many of those can exist per square mile.
Or Am I Bluffing?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But nothing. Electronics has fundamentally shifted away from the basics of the R, the L and the C and is now about the ONE and the ZERO.
(Disclaimer: For the vast majority of hobyists I believe I am right. Naturally for the professional engineer working in a corporate environment things are different. But even then, there aren't that many 'scopes anymore. It's about the DCA.)
And you've just pointed out the problem: that attitude. For years good old analog stuff has been swept under the carpet of "so last year", pushing enthusiasts into digital only. In fact, there are worlds of fun analog including (but not limited to) HAM radio, music and audio, vacuum tubes, sensors, transducers, etc. Talk like yours sways opinion away from the fun of analog.
I'm a lifelong (50+ years) electronics enthusiast, BSEE with some MS coursework in DSP, I do C/Assembler - my point is it's not about what's "right" or "wrong" - I use Windows where it's best, Linux, and MacOS X - as well as analog, digital, software. There's nothing like putting a 'scope probe in an analog circuit and watching in real time as you make changes to signals, pots, variable tuning caps and inductors, etc. Digital can be fun too- it all has its place and balance is needed. I say get these kids into HAM radio. Let them loose in some open RF spectrum and learn something.
Really? They 'returned to their hobbyist roots' ? I sure as heck didn't see anything like that in the Radio Shacks around here.
And in the process get themselves a nice bonus and a line on the resume for their next job.
Across the pond, Jessops also went tits up.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sure if all you're doing is prebuilt *DIGITAL* projects.
If however you work with anything analog or that has accessable test points for signals that are below the maximum signal rate for your oscilloscope, it can be invaluable in diagnosing system problems (Especially nowadays with the ever increasingly electronics in cars.) Additionally, in any sort of audio equipment, an oscilloscope will be an invaluable tool in diagnosing problems. My dad's been making a steady and ever increasing incoming doing this type of work for the past 10 to 15 years due to the fact that nobody competent seems willing to put in the effort to diagnose and repair electonics equipment (To the point where he's gotten equipment to repair with hundreds to thousands of dollars in 'repairs' done to it where the actual problem as as little as a 20 cent resister somewhere and even diagnostic time to find the issue was under between a half hour and an hour.
Point being: There's lots of projects to be had where these 'supposedly' obsolete tools are quite useful, may be useful to a significant subset of the market, but where due to changing cultural perception nobody is seriously bothering to learn or support them.
I recently built a little fan with a project box to help circulate air in my kegorator. I bought a PC fan, project box, and a AC adapter at radio shack. The parts, which I could have bought online for about $10, cost $42. I paid it anyway because of convenience factor but it definitely soured me towards Radio Shack. The 80mm PC fan was something like $16, little plastic project box was around $12. It was rediculousl
I hate to break it to you, but the Radio Shack you pine for hasn't existed for over seventy years. (Yes, you read that right seventy.) Radio Shack has been "every other electronics dealers" since it started selling audio gear in 1939, while still under the original ownership and decades before being bought out by Tandy in 1962. Electronic bits and pieces have been a sideline since at least the 1950's.
Seriously, practically everyone being modded +5 in this discussion is completely and utterly clueless about the history of Radio Shack and what has paid the bills for most of half a century - A/V accessories and cheap imports sold at a high markup. (Best Buy is killing them on the former, and WalMart on the latter.)
Most people who need a resistor don't need to know how they work, just why they need it.
There is a difference between an electrical engineer and a physicist.
And they could host maker events and maker classes too. "Hey kids! Come this Saturday and learn how to build a robot!" How does that not bring in business?
They have not been worth a damn for decades, its time to throw in the towel and give up. Go out with what little bit of dignity they have left.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
To which I say read the damn datasheet.
Unless you're trying to interface with a third-party legacy product for which you cannot obtain a datasheet.
I duno the Maker movement is going on strong . RS could welcome makers, host "hobby nights", let people share designs for 3D printers and then sell parts to build them.
That being said, I don't do hardware only software, but I know plenty of hardware hackers!
Hobbyist market is dead, cell phones are going to be cheaper and better sold by Wal-get / Best Buy / and the Carriers themselves...Radioshack is dead...unless...stay with me....
Amazon should buy them and here's why.
1.) lots of little stores become little warehouses for Amazon distribution
2.) the retail front can be the brick and mortar showroom for actual stuff for people hold and see. Think Xmas time when a huge chunk of sales happen.
3. ) The stores are generally small, so its not like they are blowing huge $$$ on Best Buy sized places.
Shut a bunch of the high rent ones down keep the rest and re-badge Amazon. Just like FedEx did with Kinkos.
Well RadioShack would have hundreds of sales if they had the parts i needed for my projects. Heck i live in a university town, and we have a fairly developed EE program, yet when we need parts we are handed websites to go to. We have 2 radio shacks here in town, if nothing else they could boost sales around finals week, as all these EE's are trying to get their projects working. What we need badly is lab power supplies (desk unit and IC), signal generators (desk unit and IC), PWM's (mainly IC's as this can be emulated with a signal generator and a few transistors), transistors (all kinds), diodes, (a few power transistors, not many are needed as these are a specialized part), at least one of each kind of digital logic IC, temperature sensors (at least one kind of thermocouple and a few thermistors would be nice.), capacitors, inductors, transformers (at least few ranges, including some that can be used to make linear power supplies.), oh ya wire
What does RadioShack carry, connectors, battery holders, a few transistors (hardly a broad range), some diodes, some stores carry board etching supplies (but no tools to make the broads or even tuts on how to etch them), RFID sensors, some light sensors (mainly infrared, I guess this is barely acceptable), a few led's (nice but only occasionally important), a decent selection of capacitors, one or two transformers (probably not one of the ones you need), and some wire. Oh ya and now they carry arduinos, at a significant markup.
Not quite what we want/need.
They reduce the electric potential through "resisting" the flow of free electrons. Now, is that how they work, or why I need it? My 5 year old knows what a resistor is and does, as toys come with potentiometer-like variable resistors to get different effects, and daddy helps explain.
Learn to love Alaska
It depends on the store. Some are just cell phone stores, but one in particular where I live has focused on "Makers" and stocks Arduino, Raspberry Pi, chips, connectors, servo's, EL wire, all sorts of fun stuff, and is a great place to shop. Sure, online is a little cheaper, and of course you can find exactly what you want online if you don't mind waiting, but it's great to be able to see what a product is like hands-on, and buy it locally and support a local business. And when I needed a DB25 solderable connector, for example, I had it in a few minutes, and finished the repair instead of waiting days for shipping.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Yes, they "resist" the flow of electrons.
How?
I recently needed a new 123 lithium battery for my EDC flashlight. Radio Shack wanted $13 for the store brand, while I found an Engergizer at Target for $7. With that kind of pricing it is no wonder that they are doing poorly.
This, this times ten. The stores tend to carry only their own brand, the prices are too high, and the quality is poor. I recently found myself in need of a power adapter, 120v AC to 12v 0.5a DC. Didn't want to wait for shipping or online ordering, so I went to a few retailer sites to compare inventory. (FWIW the exact adapter I needed, tailor made to the product in question, was $6.99 + $3 shipping from both Amazon and NewEgg, but as stated I wanted it "now".)
Radio Shack's site had a few reasonable offerings that were marked "Web Only," the only products that were actually available in a local store were Enercell, which is a Radio Shack owned brand. The adapter I figured would be most likely to fit my need was $25 and had a couple of one-star reviews stating that it was a poorly filtered and regulated source, pumping out close to 16v with no load and still above 12v with a 500ma load. For heaven's sake, Radio Shack has had decades to source and develop quality products, they used to be known for them, and their own hallmark brand is apparently shit!
I poked around Best Buy's site for a couple of minutes, but they didn't seem to have what I needed, even as an internet only order. I checked Wal-Mart's site, they too had some nice online only offers, but one available in-store for $20 that comes with 6 different connectors and had good reviews. So my local choices came down to a $25, "known poor" product at Radio Shack, or a $20 well-reviewed offbrand product at Wal-Mart.
I went to Wal-Mart. The adapter works fine.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
One thing that has always irritated me about Radio Shack is that just about everything they sell says "Radio Shack" on it. No professional equipment that I can think of is labeled with the name of the store where it was purchased, so this makes everything from Radio Shack feel like cheap amateur stuff.
Evil is the money of root.
The average hobbyist has what to do with this exactly?
Mostly random stuff.
DK has turned into a bunch of suits. ("happy clocking" now, a**holes.)
low volume pricing there is now punitive.
no one can prototype there without getting raped.
Life is better at mouser, element 14.
Radio Shack has no place left at all, at their price point.
They didn't even have raw NE-2's last trip.
jr
I had the RadioShack 120 as a kid and I spent some time with it but I was never addicted. Now, as an adult, I've started doing basic digital electronics for work. Mostly microcontroller stuff so far and my knowledge of ICs is poor, but I plan on improving it soon. Nonetheless, I've built a motor control system and micro-manipulator that performs everything I'd have needed from a commercial unit but is about 10x cheaper and tailored for what I need. I'm currently finishing off a programmable dose-delivery unit for our samples. There are various other, smaller, things for which electronics has been handy. I shop from Digikey, Mouser, Robot Shop, Adafruit, and Sparkfun. It wouldn't even occur to me to go to the local Radioshack unless I was desperate for a part *right away*. They usually have bugger all in stock anyway.
soylentnews.org
My local shop has this stuff too, but the selection of mics is poor and the component section is rather bare.
soylentnews.org
Would you recommend a Porsche 911 for someone learning to drive just because you have 50 years experience driving and have fun in your Porsche? Fine if you can afford it, but how about a nice pair of socks and sneakers first? Then a bicycle? There's plenty of time for that new hobbyist to get into "analog fun", but that doesn't mean s\/he should throw away the other 50 years of progress in electronics that we are enjoying now.
I'm just being pragmatic and realistic.
If you're someone with 300$ to spend on starting out, that's either 1 so-so probably used scope and nothing else, or a used power supply, a basic multimeter and a soldering iron. With a bit more work, insistence and luck that 300$ is going to get some parts too.
What's better for the neophyte? Especially if they still have decades ahead of them to get into all the other nooks and crannies of electronics.
Mostly random stuff.
When you need That Part on a Sunday afternoon, you're not going to get it from Digi-Key or Mouser.
Are you serious? It's a friggin hobby. You can wait a couple of days, hell, probably a couple of weeks without any real impact.
Sure, you can sell cables at outrageous markups, but honestly, those could be done without for a couple of nights unless you're an addict. It's very hard to compete with an online seller where the user can search, call, and/or chat with the vendor, and likely get it shipped the same or next day, with express delivery.
Retail does best when users don't know what they want, or want to be talked through their purchase (i.e., big ticket items do very well), but for people who know what they want, and don't need (or even want) to talk to someone to make a purchase, online is preferable.
I'm surprised they lasted this long - in fact, i remember seeing /. posts wondering how the hell they were making their margins with all this competitive pressure.
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Well, there isn't enough demand to put a hobby electronics shop in every mall and on every major highway. In fact it's a mystery to me how Radio Shack got as big as it is, other than it predated big box consumer electronics store.
What you need to support a bricks and mortar store network like this is an answer to these two questions:
(1) Why will people go to the store?
(2) What will they end up buying when they get there?
Have you noticed how bookstores tend to have coffee bars in them now? It's because you're thinking about going to Starbucks for coffee, so why not go to the one in Barnes and Nobles and do a little browsing while you're there? Granted, you may go there specifically for books some time, but having a coffee bar gets you in the door enough more times that you end up spending more money there annually than you would otherwise.
If you're going to buy a phone, why go to Radio Shack instead of your carrier's store? If you're going to buy a radio or a set of speakers, why go to Radio Shack instead of a big box electronics retailer? About the only reason I can think of to go to Radio Shack is if I needed an odd sized battery, which is not such a bad draw but it wouldn't draw me in more than once or twice a year.
Sure, if Radio Shack had a great parts counter it might get people like you or me to go there, and we might walk out with a headset or a cell phone. But there aren't enough people like you or me to put a Radio Shack in every mall and along most major highways. If they could just get enough people in the doors, they could sell them all kinds of electronics-y stuff, but there's nothing that will bring lots of people in the door. Every time I go to Radio Shack, it seems like the number of customers is something like 1.2x the number of staff. That's no way to make money.
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That's all great if your goal is programming electronics. Not so much if you want to make stereo equipment or equalizers that don't require DACs or 35.1 surround sound.
So you are saying that's not "how it works"? Why do you need to know? Is this a test, are you wanting to know, or are you just harassing anyone unfortunate enough to reply to you?
Learn to love Alaska
In Australia, we've got Jaycar, half discrete electronics and componentry, half electronic toys, with very knowledgeable staff, and they're expanding. I go there by choice, because they always seem to have at least one of the odd little bits I need, and instead of blank stares I get people who listen, pay attention, and know what I'm talking about. They're able to shift their conversation levels to your level quickly.
Personally I think their educational level is a little better than average. I blame Monash and surrounds.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
That statement might be a little too categorical. The line between digital and analog is getting very blurry - SATA interfaces are, practically speaking, a bit of both analog and digital design. Ethernet has always been about stuffing bits through a noisy, imperfect transmission line, and 1G and 10G (and 40G) Ethernet just make it that much worse.
The good news is that even cheap 'scopes can also serve as a frequency counters, voltmeters, and some cheaper models can also serve as spectrum analyzers (and practically all of the expensive ones can). Take a look at how good the $200 USB-connected 'scopes are now.
If you're making robots or UAVs, you may not need a 'scope, but if you're making ham radios then you're going to want one. Get a cheap USB one so you can also use it as a spectrum analyzer.
(and if you get a chance, play with a Tektronix 4100 series - it's basically a logic analyzer that happens to have a 4-channel analog 'scope built in. Analog events can serve as the trigger for the digital side (and vice versa), and it comes with two decoder ROMs priced in - it can snoop CANBUS, for instance, and trigger the analog side on particular CANBUS messages. Not something everyone needs, but if you need it, you need it in a big way.)
Speaking of HD, and Lowes. I chose Lowes because it was more convenient -- I went past it every day -- and it had the item I regularly bought.
...I think they blew it on the discount CC. Should have gone the Target route of a "custom in-house finance" card, so that they track everything (I'm sure) in exchange for that 5% discount. Also, Red card shoppers warp through the checkout. Smart. I don't care for Target in many ways, but they also show they know what they are doing in many others.
Anyway, I went for the Lowes credit card, and save on each purchase. Whoop.
The totally bizarre part is every time I am at the cashier, they always ask if I have a "My Lowes" card, or some such thing. They never give me a few features and benefits -- just confuse the snot out of me.
If I already have the discount CC, why would I want some other probably spamalishus card?
Other than that, no other weirdness in the whole story. No random selling. Just helpful staff (as I have found at HD as well).
I come here for the love
Except Costco. A Costco is flat-out cheaper. Almost every time, and especially on the core products we all buy every week. Combine that with the convenience and it is very hard to beat them. I no longer try. If they have it, end of story. Otherwise, start checking at other stores.
I come here for the love
Homebrewing stores (the malt kind that is) have made a successful business model of teaching people how to brew beer in a 3 hour class charging a nominal fee, Afterwards they are lined up buying all sorts of brewing ingredients and paraphernalia..
The local store has a lot of the stuff "makers" are looking for, but the staff has no clue, and that I think is an even bigger problem. Who with any sort of technical background besides maybe a college student is going to work full time at a Radio Shack. I remember growing up in the 80's the local radio shack had people working behind the counter that could actually help you with the parts or problem you where trying to fix.
Well first thing you need to know is that energy is "moving", not electrons. There's a term called drift current which refers to electrons moving down a linear path like a wire...but very slowly. What does happen fast is the energy is transmitted through the medium via electrons exchanging energy, all via the atomic structure of the material.
Regarding resistance, the composition of the material determines how difficult it is to get the energy through to the other side. Since the energy can't be perfectly transmitted, some is converted to heat energy. If we tune the material to just the right composition, then we can control the ratio of potential energy to charge flowing through (Ohm's law). You'll find that most resistors are carbon based but those that need to handle higher energy throughput (power), are wirewound.
Bottom line is that talking about resistance is less about electrical engineering and more about materials science. Though of course the two are subsets of physics which makes the distinction moot. Best of luck.
With worse customer service than Radioshack but (at the time) far far better selection than Fry's.
The Sacramento one used to be awesome other than their terrible manager and eventually lack of turnover in merchandise (I must've bought hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of stuff there, but after around 2002 they didn't stock much new and by I think around '06 they'd gone out of business, eventually being replaced by HFE a group of former patrons who banded together to buy the store then drove it into the ground with similiar shenanigans to how it was when still under Halted ownership.
There's still one of their competitors in town still, but the place is even worse customer service than HSC was towards the end.
Being out around silicon valley, you're less likely to find the same dwindling electronics supply that you get further out from it. And if Sacramento is having problems with it, I can only imagine what other areas further from tech epicenters are like for financially supporting brick and mortar electronics stores.
That's why it needs to be a hybrid. Electronics parts and cameras are similar enough and can share store front.
I don't know about an "average" hobbyist, but I'm part of a community of hobbyists developing add-ons for obsolete video game consoles. The closest thing we have to a datasheet is what someone who's good with a logic analyzer can reverse engineer.
Two words - printable quadracopter.
totally overpriced, even compared to other physical stores. perhaps barnes and noble will be next? i have no idea who is keeping these places in business.
...
I think that only applies for businesses. When I order stuff through my job they'll put it on an airplane the same day, when I order to my house the order will sometimes sit around for a few days.
I did once put in a fake business name to see what would happen, I got a wake up call early in the morning asking if they could do drop shipping and another one later by a salesperson trying to set up a business account.
The one computer Radio Shack had that I found very useful was its TRS 100 family.
It ran a long time on plain old penlight cells... like a calculator. It wasn't all that fast, but it did have I/O ports you could talk to and it would make a dandy datalogger. It was about the power of today's Arduino.
That's the one they quit making.
excellent quality and price, a++ would buy again
Well I remember there being a time, when I was in middle school or so when the local radio shack sold at least Resisters, Capacitors, Multi-Meters, LEDs, small ICs like 555 timers, Piezo-electric buzzers, battery cases, solar cells, motors, breadboards, copper circuit boards, pcb etchant, solder, soldering irons, wires, shrink-wrap tubing, etc., etc. Last time I wandered into one a few years ago I didn't even see *any* of that stuff. But they had crappy "realistic" radios. Great. As for there not being enough people doing electronics as a hobby? Well... to that I say: 1. If not, then it's the end of an era, and the chain can die a honorable death by sticking to their guns until the end. 2. I don't really believe this. Sure, people don't build computers and TVs from scratch with soldering irons anymore - but there is lots of cool stuff they could sell that is targeted as hackers/makers instead of junky consumer stuff. 3. If it's so, then it must be a US thing. We have parts stores here in Japan, and I have seen them in Germany in other places. They don't need to be as common as McDonalds, but there is normally a reasonable population to support them. If not, you're probably doing something wrong.
1/2 dozen resistor values in anything but what would be considered common. Well, I guess I can solder 14 together to get what I need. And those 2 cent resistors are $2.99 a pair. Radioshack = CircuitCity = dead and buried.
I started playing with Arduinos a couple of years ago (no, not "before it was cool", but before Radio Shack started carrying them ;-) While I've gotten many of the parts I use off the Internet, or at Fry's, it's been really convenient to be able to go to the neighborhood Radio Shack and pick up a couple of components (e.g., when I need some more resistors, or when I just fried the last green LED.) They all have a couple feet of cabinets with drawers full of components. Yeah, they cost more than Fry's, but the gas for driving an extra 5 miles will get you lots of green LEDs.
(Of course, it's much more interesting to get components at Hal-Ted or Weird Stuff, but that's a much different market.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They tried the home automation thing about 5-6 years ago, it was never popular so they ended up discontinuing the line. Maybe if they'd waited until the days of the iphone, and android it would have been different, but z-wave was not the way to go.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
Too true. The two things I've gathered that are simply not taught at America's B-schools are innovation and ethics.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
When I was young (in the 60s), I opened up a pocket transistor radio to see what was inside. There was a circuit board about the size of a modern smartphone with discrete components soldered to it. There would have been no reason why somebody with more interest and money than I had then couldn't go to Radio Shack and play around with building their own radios. With the exception of TVs, that was the case with all the electronics my parents would let me open up.
That went out of style quite fast. When I was tired of my first pocket electronic calculator, I opened it up and found two chips soldered to a board, and a few discrete components. There was no way I was going to be able to do anything interesting with that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Some else said employees of RadioShack should know how a resistor works. They don't need to know that, just what they do and what they're for.
I used to work at a franchise store long ago. They operate differently than the corporate stores and are allowed to meet market demands better in certain localities. The problems are these. 1. Staff do not know the product and cannot sell it. 2. They have been hurt by their own "Online initiative that came out years ago called "Radio Shack Unlimited or as we called it RSU" which was a corporate attempt to keep stock low and have people buy online at the store. It flat didn't work and gave Mouser, MCM and Parts express extra business. Jameco is as close as a radio shack should be online. 3. Parts are not stocked well due to problem 2. 4. Prices are out of line with market. 5. They are not consistent with their stock. 6. They don't promote hobbies or hackathons. There is a huge market for joining the Make movements that are getting kids and teens back into electronics, 3d printing, etc. They need to embrace this and get active to bring the community in to see their wares. I would love to have a place to pick up 3d filament locally or components related to these items. (I know they are not completely mainstream yet, but radio shack used to be about the innovators and creators where it started from. They could be involved to their benefit as well.) 7. Placement is a problem. Like was mentioned above, they are always in the wrong place for the type of business. Between a Cato clothes store and a Cici's pizza? really. 8. Partnerships. Radio Shack could use some of it's old talents and become a "Grainger" type store for business. They did not pursue that and have been hurt since retail has fallen off so much in the phone sector push they run. Anyway, I will stop rambling. I hate to see this, but it is time to re-invent the stores.
I first bought from Radio Shack back in the 60's when there wasn't even a local store. I bought bags of surplus electronics from them by mail order. I was very excited when they first came to town in the late 60's, and have been a big supporter of them for all these decades. I spent a bit of money buying VEX robotics hardware from them a few years back just as they were getting out of that product line. At one point not too long ago, there were more Radio Shacks than McDonald's. I doubt that's true now.
They are a useless hobbyist store now and have no hope of competing with the on-line electronics and hobby websites or the big computer/hobby stores like Frys, Micro Center, or Best Buy and only seem to make money selling phones, kids toys, and batteries. I don't see any path forward for them other than to continue to be a phone resellers. The Maker-market is huge and expanding with hobbyists getting into all sorts of cool things like robotics, and 3-D printing, but Radio Shack just doesn't have the type of staff and stores to keep up with those specialty markets. They have too many stores, with too little expertise to really fit that specilty geek market.
They are just one more brick and mortar that has no place in today's on-line world. I'm surprised they have lasted as long as they have.
All Radio Shack stores that I have ever visited still sell components. The parts just aren't as obvious because most of them are now tucked into drawers rather than displayed on hooks. But a lot of their stores do a terrible job of it, with everything hopelessly jumbled in the drawers and half the components out of stock; that's something they need to change, and closing the weak stores is a step in the right direction.
I really need a new thermal printer and floppy drive for my TRS-80. Where else would I get this??
One problem is that their employee incentives work against them. Commissions are a big part of the pay for their sales staff so those people have little interest in selling parts; they want to sell you big ticket items that get them a juicy commission. Contract phones count as high priced items because the commission is based on the unsubsidized price, not the penny you hand the store for the new phone.
My recommendations to Radio Shack:
- Use the store closings to winnow out bad stores and bad staff.
- Double down on the maker market. Improve execution in parts (stocking and organization).
- Give up on laptops. The office stores have won that war. Keep a modest presence in computer accessories.
- Give up on large TVs; the wholesale clubs own that market. Stay with small TVs.
- Decrease the emphasis on phones but don't exit. Keep a strong presence in accessories and prepaid phones.
- Stay with audio and video cables and accessories. Keep the prices reasonable rather than trying to chase the premium cable business.
- Batteries, especially specialty batteries, are a core strength of the business. Never forget that.
- Keep a toe in audio. Be prepared to step it up if Best Buy fails.
- Stay with the electronic toys. Sales are decent and they bring holiday shoppers into the store.
- Get rid of sales commissions. You want people on the floor who are focused on helping customers, not maximizing their paychecks.
Having a lifelong friend that owns a Radio Shack franchise, he told me that those in the know, know the REAL reason why corporate decided to close 1,100 stores all over the nation. Sure, one can easily say low sales - standard excuse. Its OBAMACARE, a.k.a The "affordable" healthcare act. AND the DICTATED raising of the minimum wage. At the current moment, most Radio Shack franchisers pay their staff employees MINIMUM WAGE plus a percentage of the commissions on sales, with cellphone sales with plans offering the highest commission. Radio Shack would not be able to compete in the marketplace paying $15 an hour to their sales associates (manager/owners get the lion's share of the commissions and they DON'T have to sell anything!) to just stand around converting oxygen to carbon dioxide after the employee has done their mandatory cleanup/stocking/maintenance tasks while waiting for a customer to come in that WANTS to spend some big money. Radio Shack is a publicly traded corporation, and the CEO must find ways to ensure the stockholders receive a return on their investment, lest he lose HIS job and benefits package. Cutting operating costs is the usual first step for many retail companies in a stagnant economy with closing underperforming locations the norm. Giving employees government mandated health benefits, and increasing wages is not in the game plan or a viable option. Changing the method of how goods and services are marketed is the usual second step.....with Chapter 13 reorganization next, and then Chapter 7 and liquidation of the company. I can't wait to see how many "McBurger" joints and retailers are left open after these mandatory "executive orders" are enacted by the "community organizer" in Washington. The "good idea" fairy must be a personal friend of his.
They were talking about, e.g., a capacitor. How can they make a profit with free home delivery?
Then again, that's why he's RichMan's, and not PRMan.
How they work could be useful if it has knock-on concerns. Like heating in a resistor.
Learn to love Alaska
You're more likely to think RadioSpares, not RadioShack. Particularly if you're after components.
I remember the last time I went to Radio Shack. It would have been...gosh...hmm...never mind, I just don't know. I think I bought a few little bags of crimp terminals maybe back in 2000. Maybe it's my fault?
gosgog:
Someone please do 'em a Favor,.. copy this entire Slashdot Daily News article and all the responses, send it to RS headoffice & just mebbe a smart Secretary, CEO, major Stockholder or Marketing whiz, will realize what Radio Shack should be all about! Perhaps then could then Salvage it!
SPENDING MONEY ON SUPERBOWL ADS IS NOT GONNA BE THE SALVATION. Nor will low wage employees with a BLANK STARE help!
Where I am in S.E. Asia now, the mail service is not reliable & my "net" is unreliable!
Radioshack is the place where grandma goes when her landline phone stops working.
There is not one single USB 3 device in Radio Shack: neither cables nor flash drives nor anything USB3.
The staff doesn't understand half of what they have in the back, where nerds go for an obscure item for a project.
They will try to sell you an extended warranty on a 5-dollar audio cable.
The coffin has a lot more nails, but I think four is enough to point out.
Radio Shack or rather Tandy Corporation, actually owned manufacturing for cable and wires, and electronics parts. Prior to the move to have "name brand" electronics in stores, when they still had there own brand, employs could do pretty well based on sales and yes they were much more knowledgable.
I still have the very first Tandy Corproration Stock certificate I received as an employee in the late 90's, though back then it was $22.00 a share, now well I could use it as toilet paper and it would have more value.
Funny you mention a lot of stuff that I'm working on as a side project. I decomputerized the engine in one of my vehicles, because when I really got into it, the design was horrible from the electronic and physical standpoints. Who the hell blocks 50% of the airflow to half the cylinders with a chunk of plastic to hold the injector spider (ya, weird design). My neighbors thought I was nuts, because I just kept pulling out parts saying "Nope. Bad. What the fuck were they thinking? That's awful, gone."
There was an awful lot of "What the fuck were they thinking?"
As it turns out, with this particular design, the transmission doesn't understand that the vehicle is moving, so it goes into limp mode. It has 2nd and 3rd gear only in limp mode. So I'm recreating the transmission control computer. Who needs automatic, when you can have push button shifting? The aftermarket unit is something like $700. To replace the transmission with the older mechanical one costs something like $1,000.
So I have:
3 shift solenoids that are on or off depending on the gear it should be in
1 PWM controlled solenoid, to determine the TCC (a computer operated torque converter)
3 shifter position sensors (I believe, I'd have to check my notes) to say what the gearshift is in.
1 brake position sensor (on/off)
1 variable resistance throttle position sensor.
1 pulse sensor for the vehicle speed sensor.
All in all, a pretty simple setup. I'm giving two push buttons, to shift up or down, for the forward speeds. Automatic was horrible at picking gears anyways. But now I have to run 3 solenoids to pick the gear, and send the appropriate duty cycle PWM to the TCC, based on the TPS and gear.
Like 1st gear low TPS gets a low duty cycle or it would stall. Full throttle in any gear gets a pretty high duty cycle.
Reading around, I could only find one company with a fairly open box, but it's pricy, and you get to assemble everything yourself. Or you can spend a bunch of money on a purpose built box that you have no control over.
I had to get a oscilloscope, to make sure the PWM was what I intended to put out. I got creative there, and found some software to use with a sound card. It works pretty well. It's not perfect, but good enough for this purpose, since I know what it's suppose to generate. I wouldn't try to tune something I wasn't controlling the source on though. Honestly, it had been years since I had used an oscilloscope. I was very happy with my results, and even sang to it by clipping it onto a microphone (probes, alligator clips, same thing. {grin}). I sang a C3 at 129.20Hz, which should have been 130.81Hz. Not bad, considering I didn't listen to a reference tone first, especially since I can't sing for shit.
Now picture going into a Radio Shack and saying that's what you're trying to do. They glazed over after the first 10 seconds, and then just said "if you need help finding anything, just ask." I asked for a bigger box to put the parts into while I was shopping. :) I did send them on a quest to find LEDs for me. Just saying "find me red, yellow, green, and blue LEDs, all rated for the same voltage" caused them trouble. I wasn't *trying* to be difficult. I just wanted to be able to swap them without playing too much with different resistors. As I recall, they found them online, but they'd have to order them.
Just asking for some heatsinks for some of the components I grabbed turned out to be too much for one store. It's not like I had a *huge* box, it was just a few parts out of their bins. They had some at one store, and a different type at another store, but not enough for the project. I relegated myself to repurposing old CPU heatsinks that I have at home. They'll do fine.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
You can make a somewhat functional oscilloscope with a Windows PC that has a sound card, Zelscope (or other free software), a headphone plug, a few resisters, and some alligator clips. For the fairly primitive stuff I've needed, it's worked fine. For higher frequencies (i.e., not in the normal audio range), you'd have to look at something better, but there are perfectly functional USB devices that will do the job for cheap.
If you want the Porsche of O'scopes, you'd have to pay the premium prices. It all depends on what you're trying to measure.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I tend to disagree, that digital is made up of analogs. A scope can capture the digital in a visual manner as well. More importantly if you are looking to do any type of modulation a scope becomes a necessity in trouble shooting because just a pinch off and you never make your translation to digital or away from it. It certainly isn't the most important tool but if you want to get into more complex and interesting things it is a vital tool. With digital scopes you can capture an event like a data-burst that happens so fast that even the best multimeters will not register it. The basics haven't changed they are just more contained.
If you want to see a store that is on the ball (and now another great place to buy batteries) is Harbor Freight.
Harbor Freight prove the premise that there's nothing more expensive than a cheap tool.
Out of the half dozen or more of their tools that I've used, not a single one was fit for its intended purpose. Not one. There's the rotary tool with a shaft so crooked and unbalanced that it's useless for all but the most coarse jobs, the torch that stops working within days, the brake bleeder that can't keep vacuum (and comes with accessories made of such cheap rubber that it falls apart halfway through their first use). HF tools belong next to my Radio Shack soldering irons that don't get hot enough to solder.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
Do you know how a resistor works?
Yes.
No, that's why he needs someone in Radio Shack to help him.
Actually, I do know. It would also be nice if the person at the store knew what they actually are and where to find them, and how to get the right one, if they are going to be so damned helpful. Knowing a little of how they work, and why you would want one (or more) for a project you are working on would allow them to help spec the right one depending on the grade of work being done by it in the circuit that it will potentially (pun intended) be put into. If they can't take the time to learn about their products, or if the manager's can't hire people who already know, then they should just leave the people rushing to the back of the store to the parts section alone, and just go over to talk to grandma and grandpa looking at the Trac phones.
Most people who need a resistor don't need to know how they work, just why they need it.
There is a difference between an electrical engineer and a physicist.
Most people who need a resistor need to know which resistor will work for the circuit intended, and what grade of resistor will not burn up in the circuit. Most people doing so, will already know coming into the store what they need. In order to be able to pick the right one, you need to know a bit about how they work and how they are specified. They have to have the right resistance and be for the right amount of current/voltage in the particular circuit. You wouldn't put the cheap 5 cent plastic ones in a very high voltage or amperage circuit where a ceramic coated one is needed, depending on what you are doing, unless you specifically want it to fail catastrophically, even if they have the same resistance. Not knowing how it works and the right application for the right resistor could cause a fire. The customer should already know some of this, but if the fool behind the counter is going to try to help, they should know the difference as well, so they don't get sued for pushing the wrong part on a customer without checking first. I wouldn't leave the store with the wrong part, but if they won't let me look for the right part in their bins, I will leave with no parts and no sales to them.
You can't expect the sales person at a store to know the details of the project you're working on, even if they have a masters in EE.
Would you spend 40% of your time (not counting sleeping) working at RadioShack or another place that pays a similar wage?