[OT] RadioShack suspended from NYSE as bankruptcy looms

From:

"In hopes of remaking its fading brand, the company has started remodeling more than 200 stores by making them more open and inviting to customers."

Ho ho. Ha ha. Whooooohahahahahahahaha.

No one sane goes to a Radio Shack if they actually need help from the idiot behind the counter. You go to Radio Shack only if you have a plan to successfully fend off the idiot behind the counter. The only time that you find competent help at a Radio Shack is if the store happens to be close to a college or high school that has a strong technical program, and then whatever competent help they do inadvertently hire never lasts. (Or maybe they get hired away -- I dunno).

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com

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g t d

RadioShack _used_ to be a source for at least some common electronics parts. As of late, they're mostly cellphone shills and low end "home theater". So, instead of running to the corner for some resistors, I just DigiKey.

Too bad, so sad, but now they deserve to collapse.

(Though I do have some fond memories... like the time a RadioShack employee tried to tell me there was a difference between a plain aluminum antenna and an anodized one... "you need the anodized one to receive color TV" ;-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142     Skype: skypeanalog  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

This didn't used to be the case. Back when I was a kid (er, 70's or so), my mom used to go to the local RS and just ask the folks "Hi, I'm DJ's mom. What would he like for christmas?" and end up with a bag full of just the right parts, kits, and tools. They knew me, and their inventory, quite well :-)

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cutive

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Yup, I think Spark fun / Adafruit and other online sites now service the h obby market.

George H.

Last I read, Sprint is interested in 1,700 to 2,000 of there stores and may take over the leases. Also Amazon is looking at there stores as drop? points. Hmm, I just went to my Yahoo stock page to look up RSH and it is not there, it was there Monday, with all the details and stories. Mikek

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[snip]

Here ya go...

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

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tive days.

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Too bad they don't remake themselves as RoboShack. I think they're missing a big market. Lotsa of experimenters these days. I hate buying on-line and waiting or not being able to see and hold what I'm buying.

Not to mention DigiKey.

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

And if you apply some grease (vasoline or similar) to the antenna elements, it will be more efficient. I think it's called frequency grease.

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In addition, RadioShack could just live on as an online shop under the big umbrella of Amazon. It does NOT have to run a standalone online shop. Learning to partner could be an easy way out.

I don't think people really understand Radio Shack, they see it as some parts emporium, and think that's where the chain went wrong.

I first heard of Radio Shack in 1971 when I found the hobby electronic magazines, and they came to Canada that year or the next, I know I saw a Radio Shack in 1972. Maybe that skews it, but there was never a wide variety of parts, and they were expensive. Of course, I knew about the local parts stores in 1971, so I had that reality to compare Radio Shack with.

ONce Tandy bought Radio Shack and started expanding, it had to be more than a parts store. What did happen is that the other things Radio Shack sold kept things going, so the parts could be carried too.

I remmeber plenty of articles that specified Radio Shack parts (and Elementary Electronics seemed to have a very close relationship with Radio Shack), but that limited what the projects could be, and they were usually simple projects. Radio Shack did carry some very cutting edge parts at times, but I'm not sure they had all the needed parts to go with them. And they'd order for the next year, and if the parts ran out, that was likely it. Or more likely, they were bumped from the catalog the next year, and those exotic parts were cleared out at clearance prices, which then made the parts more in line with elsewhere. So the time when building satellite receivers was kind of trendy, Radio Shack sold ceramic filters and some ICs to build them, but I dont' think they had everything needed. At one point, I seem to recall one could get the

8080 CPU from Radio Shack, maybe the needed clock generator, and maybe some RAM, but I don't think it was everything you needed, and it was a premium price.

No, at best Radio Shack was a "niche", but they covered different niches. More important, it got electronics out of some basement shop that catered to insider hobbyists. As it expaned in the late sixties or early seventies, there wasn't much competition. Lafayette and Olson never expanded as much. There were hifi stores, but they tended to be higher end, and realtively small local stores. Otherwise, you'd often buy electronic equipment in the electronic department of your local department store.

So if you needed that police band radio, or a shortwave receiver, and didn't identify as a radio hobbyist, you could go to a more accessible place near your home, and try that stuff out. Radio Shack probably was the most accessible place to buy a shortwave radio over the decades; the alternative was mail order or some specialized out of the way store. that's fine for the hobbyist, but there are other people who might want to listen for the contents, and Radio Shack filled that need. Same with CB sets.

And that is another key to Radio Shack's place in things. Circa 1971, the average home had little electronics. A tv set or two, some radios, a record player or maybe even a stereo. Unless someone was a hobbyist in some way, there wasn't much for the home. It was too expensive or too big, or not yet invented.

But within five years, there were pocket calculators, digital watches, digital clocks, even computers. A lot of things became viable because of the IC, and then a bit later more viable because of the microprocessor. And Radio Shack was there to sell that stuff to the public. They didn't tend to sell expensive first iteration items, they waited a bit and then sold at a more viable price to a wider audience. A lot of things changed between 1971 and 1981, either making things better through digital electronics, or completely new things.

You'd get your catalog and had a good idea what you wanted before you entered the store. Radio Shack carried branded items, which made what they sold different from elsewhere, even if you could sometimes tell was actually manufacturing it. And while the regular prices were probably about average, you knew many items would be on sale in the flyers, and then the prices were great (and apparently still profit making, since the same items would keep going on sale).

Radio Shack started selling computers, and probably that made computers very accessible to Somewhere, USA. You could get that metal detector, or that sampling musical keyboard, or that clunky first generation cellphone, it didn't matter where you were. Radio Shack was a familiar place, and the catalog made it friendlier (you could read up before meeting the clerks), so you probably did go there for more things that could be increasingly had elsewhere.

I very rarely bought parts, except for power transformers which seemed to be about the same price as elsewhere. Only if I got stuck, or it was a clearance or sale, did I buy parts there.

But I bought the tools, the catalog showed me and i could pull it off the pegboard myself, when the old style parts stores, you'd have to describe what you wanted before they could pull out something along those lines. And I bought computers, and audio equipment. It's probably the one store that got a lot of my money.

Radio Shack was only a viable parts store because of all the other stuff it sold. I remember when there were endless stores downtown here, they weren't selling parts to keep going, one would have been enough, and besides there were better local places for parts. But since they were a viable business, the parts remained.

So all this talk about how it needs to reorient itself to its "core business" is silly. It wasn't viable as a parts store for a long time.

But it did lose its way when it stopped selling housebrands and competed with everyone else. On the other hand, without the housebrands, it had alot less reason to have a catalog.

And there has been competition for the stereos and computers and other electronics for a couple of decades, at least. There may have been nothing Radio Shack could do, maybe it's just it's time to fade so other chains can thrive. OLson and Lafayette disappeared a long time ago, nobody fussed that much about it.

The hobbyist origins may even be a liablity. I keep reading stories about hwo Radio Shack lost its way, when the parts haven't been a major thing in a very long time, and were only viable because the chain could sell other things to Mr. and Mrs. Mainstream. If the article writers think "parts" when they think of Radio Shack, then that may also be the imagery of the general public, and that means even fewer customers.

Michael

I recall an employee at RS that was very suspicious of a project I was working on because I requested to take apart a DTMF phone dialer in the store to see if the insides were the same as an older larger model they just discontinued.

He was apparently an engineer from Motorola that was cut as they started to circle the drain.

He did agree to open the dialer up to see if my new crystal would fit and I was on my way.

That's one of my fond memories of radio shack, but there haven't been any of those in recent times other than seeing a DL1/3N lithium cell for $15 at the one by work. Really- $15 for one.

Hell, today they would probably call Homeland Security.

A few years ago I was "talking" with a PC help guy and when he found out I had XP SP2 not SP3 he said it looks like I was trying to do something illeg al. Now what the hell can you do that is illegal with SP2 but not SP3. Tell you what, My XP box is running fine with SP2 and it is NEVER getting SP3 n ow. I'll get my own AV progerams thank you, take your "essentials" and stic k them where they are sure not to get a sunburn.

Nah Jim. I'm a Mouser fan myself.