The Woolworths doppelganger brand names of Dick Smith and Tandy are consumer electronics stores that bear little relation to the hobbyist stores of the
1970's. Jaycar and Altronics are probably more directly comparable. If you want interesting then head to Rockby.
Ah you mean the old "Battery club card" and you got one of a choice of AA C D or 9 volt battery.
Tandy also used to stock a lot of kind of OK hifi gear in the
70s and early to mid 80s.
They also had a range of kits which were essentially stripped down commercial products that you could build. I recall a shortwave radio bought in 1978 which seemed pretty fancy at the time and, though I could not build it myself I helped make it and it had a wood case and looked pretty neat.
Interesting. When I started off as a hobbiest in the early to mid 80s I never saw Tandy as a hobbiest store, with their resistors and other items packaged in multiples and usually much much more expensive than DSE. My opinion of Tandy back then, as it is now, is that it was really just a consumer electronics store.
DSE is different, the company as I remember it in the 80s was definately more hobbiest orientated, and yes it has over the years slowly moved more into the consumer electronics area however at least it still carries the basic parts needed for most hobbiest work. I liken DSE now to the 7-11 of electronics.
Jaycar seems to be following the DSE path slowly but surely. While they are at the moment still chock full of interesting parts they certainly don't have the range they used to, with much of the store space becomming dedicated to consumer computer items, alarm/security and gimicks. The parallel with DSE is easy to see.
I never shopped at Rockby before, however I went into their shop not long ago and was disappointed to see very little stock of anything on the shop floor. Many trays were empty and glass cabinets only containing one or two items, looked like a shop winding up business! However they did have what I wanted and I grabbed a copy of their catalog which has heaps of stuff, I guess much of it must be warehoused out the back? Looks interesting though.
Funnily enough, though, when DSE & Tandy merged it was essentially all the old Tandy/Realistic/RadioShack lines that were dropped. Don't know why they bother to have two signs and twee catalogues with the same specials shuffled to different pages.
Prior to DSE taking over Tandy it wasn't much different. Last time I had been into a Tandy they had very little of the old audio gear they were once renowned for, and in had come the usual range of Panasonic and Sharp micro hifi's, name branded cordless phones and so on. They still had RadioShack and Optimus branded stuff in the form of cheap audio switch boxes and cables. Since the takeover all I have seen is that DSE have continued that philosophy and changed the cheapy Optimus/RadioShack stuff for cheapy DSE/Digitor brand gear.
I think DSE want to keep the Tandy stores as pure consumer electrical stores (which was where Tandy was heading anyway), and the DSE stores as the combo they are. Slowly killing off Tandy stores as they find shop space in the centers where they figure its worth having a DSE. I'm sure half the reason DSE bought Tandy was just to get a foothold in some of the centres they were previously unable to, and when the leases expire hound centre management to give them larger shop space in return for the promise of a nice new DSE store in its place.
On Wed, 4 May 2005 19:19:45 +1000, "John Smyth" put finger to keyboard and composed:
I suspect that in the not too distant future even stores like Jaycar and Altronics will either disappear or go the same way as DSE/Tandy. After all, why bother stocking components if the low cost of a ready made commercial item renders it uneconomical to repair, or if the item costs less to manufacture than an equivalent kit?
I envisage a future where the majority of repairs will be done by backyarders with low overheads, or by retired hobbyists looking for something to keep them busy. The trend toward smt components and ASICs will probably kill the kit industry as well.
- Franc Zabkar
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Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email.
If want to see the change from an Electronic store to a consumer/Computer electronics store just look at TECS.
You once where able to walk into their La Trobe street store and ask for almost any electrical component, now you get very strange looks of "What are you talking about?"
Radio Parts is another.
Just shows you how much of a throw away world we now live in!
Remember, TECS is an abbreviation of their original company name: The Electronic Components Store..
As early as 1987, TECS started selling non-core electronics products such as computer parts (bought an 8 bit 64k VGA card and AOC VGA (640x480 max res) monitor from them, waay back then when I sold them Talking Electronics kits for the hobbyist market) and it's all been downhill ever since.
At $3.40 each their books were terrific value. Was leafing through one just the other day. Colin's business and life philosophies (which he often wrote about) were 'interesting'.
DSE had them up to only about 3 years ago.
There was an Elektor section in one of Roger Harrison's mags (either ETI or AEM).
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