A History of Misses for RadioShack

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/for-radioshack-a-history-of-misses/

by aaronbrethorst • 12 years ago

119 100 12 years ago

dealbook.nytimes.com

pacaro• 12 years ago

So sad, RadioShack is still somewhere to go and get components if you need something not too exotic in a hurry, they have a respectable supply of arduino stuff in most stores too. Bricks and mortar sources for this stuff will be hard to find soon.

This article also explains to me why RadioShack was called Tandy in the UK

jawns• 12 years ago

I have fond memories of Radio Shack from when I was younger, and it would be a shame to see it die out.

So ... is there anyway to reverse its course?

Well, If I'm Radio Shack's CEO, here are the facts I need to face:

1) Radio Shack cannot compete based on price or breadth of selection against big-box stores, let alone the Internet.

2) The initiative a few years ago to hire highly knowledgable staffers who could offer expert advice didn't work. It's just not economically feasible to employ people with those qualifications in a retail store, and anyway, that alone isn't going to keep the store afloat.

But I think there's still a way for Radio Shack to be a viable company; it would just require some radical changes.

Look at Build-a-Bear, across the mall corridor. The experience of building your own bear from scratch can't be replicated online. Sure, you can order a custom bear online, but kids love Build-a-Bear because they get to witness the stuffed toy's construction from start to finish. Build-a-Bear is as much an event as it is a store.

I think Radio Shack could fashion itself into something similar, but for electronics and gadgetry.

Remember those popular Radio Shack 50-in-1 science project kits? Imagine a Radio Shack where you come in, choose a project, and then build it right there in the store. A kid might come in and buy a robot kit, or a solar-powered race car kit, and they'd be able to assemble it there, with all of the tools (soldering irons, etc.) provided, and with assistance from trained (but not necessarily expert) staffers. STEM is really big in schools right now. Maybe Radio Shack could market itself as a place to pick up STEM skills, and even partner with schools.

But it wouldn't have to be limited to kids stuff. An adult might come in and participate in a DIY electronics workshop: "How to replace an electrical outlet" or "How to work on a circuit board."

Along the same lines, imagine if every Radio Shack had a 3D printer available to rent. You can upload a 3D model to its website, or choose a model in store, come in and watch the printing process, and eventually (yes, I know, it takes hours!) take it home.

With this sort of strategy, Radio Shack wouldn't necessarily need to recruit domain experts, because what would be needed is not a wealth of general knowledge, but some very specific knowledge about a relatively small number of specific projects. A highly motivated high-school or college student could be taught how to lead people in constructing the projects or running the workshops.

That is a Radio Shack I would totally patronize, and it's a strategy that shields the store from needing to compete solely on price or on breadth of selection.

bane2• 12 years ago

Remember those popular Radio Shack 50-in-1 science project kits?

You know...that's a great idea. I'd go to RS to sit through a Saturday Arduino kit class or something.

TheOtherHobbes3• 12 years ago

I don't think it's a viable business model. The margins on a 50-in-1 kit are huge, because it's really just a handful of cheap components, a box, and a manual, which is a sunk cost after you've paid the author and printed it.

Classes are a whole other thing. You need to market them hard, you need repeat business, and if you're not running them every day you're spending a lot on retail space for a limited return.

Also, Internet tutorials. And limited interest in most of the world.

Unless you can supplement classes with a stream of high margin sales, they're not going to keep you afloat for long.

0max• 12 years ago

I've always felt that Radio Shack at this juncture would be more profitable if they created locations that would serve as ad-hoc hacker spaces. Kinda like SF's Tech Shop but for the consumer. I imagine it as a mini Akahabara in your own town, with 3D printers, CNC machines, micro-controllers and SoCs all available to use/purchase, has lessons and other community events and staffed by capable people. Unfortunately I see it only as a maker's utopian pipe dream.

clebio8• 12 years ago

This, again and again. There's probably a lot of disjoint hobbies that they could cater to, too. Radio-controlled, for instance, constantly needs lots of little parts (repairs after flight crashes) as well as space and gear to make the repairs. HAM radio guys go gear-crazy, and often have to tune their sine waves and what-not. C.f. the various posts on HN about drones and UAVs, etc.

codva• 12 years ago

RS kind of was the original maker space. They could take that market back.

malcolmwhy• 12 years ago

This sounds pretty great, the biggest hurdle would probably be the fact that most current Radio Shack stores are very small relative to the space that would most likely be needed for these kinds of varying DIY projects. Though I haven't been in a Build-a-Bear in a while, maybe ever, so maybe they could use that size model since those stores aren't enormous either.

clebio8• 12 years ago

Retail space has to be partly fungible? They sell off some percentage of their stores so they can build out a few larger spaces in malls or strip malls. Make the new spaces big, Apple-grey-and-white, well-lit areas with 3D-printers and soldering guns.....

tzs2• 12 years ago

I remember their p-box kits [1]. I definitely remember buying and building the one-tube AM radio kit. If they brought these back, I'd probably buy and build a few of them.

[1] a list of them, with photos of the manuals and circuit diagrams, and photos of completed kits: http://my.core.com/~sparktron/pbox.html

ghaff5• 12 years ago

As someone who has been walking into Radio Shacks off and on for a good many years (but was never a TRS-80 owner), it often seems as if there's an awful lot of rose-colored hindsight going on with Radio Shack.

Yes, they carried a lot of DIY components and had individual managers and other employees who could be pretty helpful and knowledgeable. But, mostly, they were where you pretty much had to go for cables and such pre-BigBox and pre-Internet and they had a broad enough retail reach that they were really good for that. And they complemented that with a bunch of toys and (mostly) craptascular and overpriced stereo equipment.

In other words, IMO, they were always a pretty mixed bag and were never particular havens of hackerdom. I'm sure some will disagree but I'd suggest that this is a pretty selective window into how Radio Shack made its money.

BTW, I like the DIY/Maker vision. I'm just very skeptical that it would support the type of real estate that Radio Shack has or otherwise lends itself to a large scale business plan. (Would love to be proven wrong.)

sillysaurus3• 12 years ago

Not to totally disagree with you, but there's something to be said for walking into a store and holding stuff in your hands before buying it. It's true that you can get any possible component you want from the internet, but on the other hand it's much more fun (funner? Is there even agreement about whether that's a word?) to walk in and fiddle around with components and imagine how you might use them in your own designs. Radioshack has all kinds of buzzers, motors, switches, etc, and some of them are even pretty ridiculous and over the top, which is awesome. You can make your own little Dr Evil Doomsday device for like $10, which is way more entertaining than a movie. I hope Radioshack manages to persist.

niels_olson• 12 years ago

The maker vision is where it's at! Did you ever get one of their make-a-radio kits? I wrapped my own shortwave coils!

Look at this parts list: who's going to fill this void?

http://antiqueradio.org/econoceanic.htm

hnriot• 12 years ago

My daughter was very underwhelmed with Build-A-Bear, it was a one time overpriced trip that we won't be repeating.

I did buy a TRASH-80 and loved it, go Zilog! Now those poor lovely old Z80 chips are stuck controlling traffic lights, which makes an old assembly programmer very unhappy indeed. I was (somewhat OT) very disheartened when I read iWoz to read how he invented the personal computer yet the TRS-80 was miles more advanced of the Apple II (and the Apple-I really didn't count as a lacked some pretty basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case etc) Tandy's saled dwarfed the Apple II too for several years. Yet reading iWoz he tried to give the impression that there was nothing else out there at the time.

Anyway, Tandy, Radio-Shack, their time has come and gone. Nobody cares anymore. CVS sell the same cables and hardware has consolidated, the days of lots of different cables has passed. Bluetooth and wifi technologies are eating into cables time. And Radioshack tried to charge me $14 for simple 1/8" m2m. So I bought it, while in the store, on Amazon using my phone for $2

RS need to liberate the real-estate and make way for something people actually need. As soon as they stopped selling radios I lost interest in their stores. The 19 year olds that work there these days most likely have never heard of SSB. Ask to test a transistor and they won't even know what npn or pnp means.

Good riddance RadioShack

Tloewald• 12 years ago

Radioshack was always a vendor of last resort. You'd go there because you couldn't get it somewhere else. They weren't even the best place for honbyists — if you were serious, they simply didn't have the inventory space (like Fry's for example did).

I do have fond memories of their catalogs in the 70s and early 80s.

zippergz2• 12 years ago

Yeah, I always had a love/hate relationship with Radio Shack. As a kid I loved looking through the catalogs, and I also liked going there to buy semi-obscure parts. It was the only store I knew of in bike-ride distance where I could get any of that kind of geeky stuff I loved. But even as a kid it was annoying, with the sales people who either didn't know what they were talking about, or were more interested in signing you up for the battery club than actually helping you buy what you wanted. As I got older, the stores simultaneously got more annoying (especially when the cell phone stuff started) and less useful. Now I can't remember the last time I bought something at a Radio Shack. I go in occasionally, hoping to find some part or component I need, but these days I always walk out disappointed.

kijin• 12 years ago

A kid ... with all of the tools (soldering irons, etc.)

I'm not sure how well that will work in today's overprotective environment where some parents won't even let their kids touch a pair of scissors. Whoever starts a DIY shop nowadays had better have billions of dollars' worth of insurance as well as a highly competent PR team.

I went to elementary school when they still allowed fourth graders to participate in AM radio assembly contests. Kids were expected to bring their own soldering irons and (gasp) lead. The vapors probably gave a bit of brain damage to all of the brightest kids in the class... but hey, at least nobody made a fuss about kids burning themselves (or one another) with those irons.

pkaye• 12 years ago

I think nothing will turn them around. Look at all the local bookstores and video stores that are gone. There are lots on online DIY electronics websites. Want cheap cables got to monoprice.com. Times have just changed for Radio Shack. A lot of what you mention above are niche activities that will not substain them much longer.

zippergz2• 12 years ago

I think this would be a cool store, but I'm not sure the market is big enough (certainly not with the number of locations they have).

zw123456• 12 years ago

I think you may be onto to something, a good model to look at is Sparkfun (sparkfun.com). What you describe is very similar to what they are doing and they have been very successful, and they have a great model for combining brick and mortar with online.

unwind• 12 years ago

But SparkFun doesn't own and operate any purely retail stores, do they? They package many of their products for retail in e.g. RadioShacks, but that's very different from actually being a chain of retail stores.

clebio8• 12 years ago

Apropos Tindie, as well. https://www.tindie.com/

rdtsc• 12 years ago

Even 10 years ago I remember walking through Fort Worth, TX looking at their headquarters and thinking. "This thing is dying". I am even surprised it lasted this long.

It could have been Amazon.

That is a bit of a stretch. Maybe it could have been Newegg.

Yeah it made bad decisions but along with other brick and mortar electronics stores it was competing with online stores.

You can see them trying. I guess this:

http://dit.radioshack.com/ (Do It Together)

is their attempt to attract the new maker and tinkerer crowd. That is a cool idea but it is probably too late.

clebio8• 12 years ago

wow, didn't know about that `dit` subdomain. Good context!

markbnj• 12 years ago

Count me among the people sad to see this once-awesome company decline. My dad was a mechanical engineer, and built our first stereo set and television from Heathkits. He used to take my brother and I to Radio Shack on weekends and the place was always buzzing.

webnrrd2k• 12 years ago

I'm sad to see it go, too. I used to love playing on the local store's TRS-80, and I was a member of their battery of the month club.

blackaspen• 12 years ago

I remember looking through the RadioShack catalogs all the time... Sad to see it now, but I recall an Onion article with the headline to the effect of "RadioShack CEO can't figure out how stores make money". I think it may be too late.

dbarlett• 12 years ago

http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-ho... (2007)

brudgers• 12 years ago

The problem with RadioShack is that I can't walk in and pick up a Raspberry Pi. That's the space they used to occupy. And the person who sold yesteryear's equivalent knew their stuff...more than just another cellphone sales clerk.

CamperBob22• 12 years ago

The problem with RadioShack is that you can pick up an Arduino or (probably, by now) a Raspberry Pi there, but you didn't know it.

jrapdx3• 12 years ago

Bingo. You got it. I visit and buy stuff at local RS stores, and yet I didn't know they sold RP there. Now I'm going to have to check it out.

Now that's something they should advertise.

tzs2• 12 years ago

Yes on the Pi: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=289254...

Widely in stock in stores.

tdicola• 12 years ago

They were a good place to find a Beaglebone Black when they were in short supply too! No crazy markup either.

netcan• 12 years ago

Radioshack should have temples to the Raspberry Pi in stores. They should sell complementary gadgets. USB stick with useful free software. Cheap little B&W monitors. In store demos of cool projects.

CamperBob22• 12 years ago

   RadioShack also knew how to ride a wave. During the 
   CB radio craze of the 1970s (you had to be there to 
   understand)...

Sure, I understand. It's just called "Facebook" now.

Lagged2Death2• 12 years ago

That would work if Facebook only allowed you to communicate with people within 10 miles of your location. And if all you were likely to talk about was radios and traffic.

cmdrfred2• 12 years ago

20 years in the future when a similar reference is made about facebook: "That would work if $NewTech only allowed your to communicate with people you went to high school with, and if all you were likely to talk about is cat videos."

RickS• 12 years ago

I was an employee as they transitioned away from hobbyist electronics and into cell phone pushing. Commission based sales intentionally pushed employee effort away from technical competence and towards harassing everyone that walked through the door into a shitty phone contract.

In my view, they made two critical mistakes:

1) The bing/G+ mistake - letting other companies set an agenda that had them relying on execution outside their area of competence. They wanted to push phone contracts and TVs like walmart, but they lack the retail space and brand recognition to do so. This transition can be made (costco comes to mind), but Radioshack bet the farm on it and lost.

2) Maliciously pricing hardware components. I say "malice" very intentionally. Things like adapters, resistors, and pots cost literal pennies coming out of China. Hobbyists will happily pay $1 for a $0.10 item to avoid sourcing it from the factory or ordering from a catalog. $8 is a different story. Going to Radioshack went from "awesome, what will I build this week?" to "man, they're really fucking me on this".

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch. Radioshack's death is long overdue.

city412• 12 years ago

I recently bought some BNC to RCA adapters from Radio Shack at $7 a pop. I thought they were screwing me on it, but I needed them that day so I bought them anyway. But if you look online, the average price for them is about $4+shipping. About a 70% markup, not that bad really considering a lot of the stuff they carry is pretty obscure.

dhbanes• 12 years ago

Selling an item for 70% more that others sell at a 400% markup ≠ 70% markup.

danjayh• 12 years ago

Do you know of any retail stores that still sell electronics components besides Radio Shack? Honestly, that will be what makes me the saddest when they go - when I really need a switch, resistor, or LED I just don't know of any other store that I can walk into and have it right now.

Naga• 12 years ago

I think, at least where I live, that role is filled mostly by local speciality stores. I can think of a few in the Toronto area, and they don't exist outside Southern Ontario.

seanp2k2• 12 years ago

Fry's has a decent component selection depending on the exact store, but nothing in the Bay Area I've seen compared to HSC in Santa Clara; it's a huge warehouse full of everything from aisles of reels of surface-mount components to shelves and shelves of used test equipment.

VLM4• 12 years ago

"they made two critical mistakes"

I'd say there's a third critical mistake, harvesting the customer stream and selling them an "every two years" phone which they pay for by postal mail bill and never have a reason to return to your store again and if they did you know they'd have $100/month less to spend at your store. And abandoning whatever reason the customer stream had for visiting so you will never get any new customers.

It would be like a bar forcing all its employees to do absolutely nothing other than convince thirsty patrons to quit drinking and start going to AA meetings in the church basement, and paying them a commission when the customer agrees to leave and never come back to the bar. And doing this for so long that everyone in the drinking community knows theres no reason to go to that bar anymore other than to get harassed to go to AA meetings. Hmm I wonder how long a bar managed like that would last?

mherkender• 12 years ago

It's not my only bad experience with Radio Shack, but they ripped my Mom off by not accepting a valid coupon for a cellphone. They stalled for a while, then told her to buy it anyway and redeem the coupon the next day. My Mom is the type to do that, but the next day they refused to redeem it. I stopped shopping there.

They may have been the offline Newegg once, but I won't be surprised when they file for bankruptcy in a decade or so.

damian20002• 12 years ago

I think its a similar story for DIY electronics shops everywhere - there's one here in Australia called Dick Smith Electronics that really doesn't sell much DIY electronics anymore ... they're now mainly retailers - phones, TVs, sim cards, PC parts, sound, cameras. Few weeks ago I asked one of the staff if they sold Raspberry Pis but he'd never heard of it.

Johnythree• 12 years ago

In Australia, Jaycar (and to a lesser extent Altronics) have long taken over from Dick Smith.

Jaycar stores stock a reasonable supply of electronics components, and has outlets in most parts of Australia.

See http://www.jaycar.com.au/stores.asp.

damian20002• 12 years ago

Yeah agreed Jaycar is decent, although they still don't sell the RPi - although they have got a good range of Arduino gear. RS Components is I believe the main RPi supplier in Aus - fast & free delivery as well. I just ordered the Model B+ from them.

city412• 12 years ago

I'm into hobby electronics and I've reluctantly shopped at Radio Shack pretty frequently over the past couple of decades.

I say reluctantly because I just hate going in there. The employees are never trained on anything yet are unbearably insistent on helping. They used to ask your phone number and address for any purchase, any at all. I just returned a $10 item the other day and they would only go through with the return if I gave them an address, phone number and email address.

I shop there to pick up a quick part I need and don't feel like waiting for it to be shipped to me and they are the only game in town. I can't even imagine shopping there for a cell phone, tablet, batteries, anything mainstream. It doesn't surprise me at all that they are going out of business.

look_at_me_• 12 years ago

This is exactly it.

I'm old enough to remember some of the expansions they tried in the 90's (a battery store, seriously?), but not old enough to remember the cb days.

To me, going to the local RadioShack was almost always a means of last resort or a lack of patience. The store was dirty, staff was consistently rude, and the merchandise was wildly overpriced.

Slowly, the phones and other even more overpriced consumer electronics started taking over the stores and the DIY sections became nearly non-existent. Now, I shop at actual hobby DIY stores which have much better selections, pricing and customer service than RadioShack ever had and probably ever will.

RadioShack itself is dead -- management is trying to force a big box concept into a small store and just doesn't get it.

g8oz• 12 years ago

> They used to ask your phone number and address for any purchase, any at all

When stores ask for this, do not feel awkward about saying "Can we skip that part?"

mikeleeorg• 12 years ago

I remember when my Dad was part of a Tandy (aka CoCo) Computer Club hosted out of a local Radio Shack. He used to take me along and I'd swap games with other computer hobbyists on 5¼-inch disks.

My Dad also taught me how to build a desktop computer from scratch. We'd go to Radio Shack to pick up all the parts.

It's sad to see how far they've fallen from that kind of a destination.

lavamantis• 12 years ago

The Internet of Things is poised to take off in the next couple of years. I just got into electronics and there's a whole world that's opening up right now due to miniaturization and economy of scale.

As some have mentioned, being a go-to place to pick up your Raspberry Pi, Espruino, Arduino, etc. and have literally all the modules and parts in stock so you don't have to wait 9 days to get it from China would be a huge opportunity. Robotics is probably going to start taking off too.

There's still hope if they bring in the right CEO/management team.

sitkack• 12 years ago

IoT and tech classes for seniors.

caster_cp• 12 years ago

I would LOVE if Sparkfun did some kind of a deal with Radioshack. I mean, SFun is what RadioShack should be right now, and they definitely could use some physical presence... ah, dreams... going through an online catalog of hobbyist stuff is not half as fun as discovering gadgets while getting to touch, play and feel them

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

If they wait another 3 months Sparkfun can probably buy RadioShack if they really want to.

Bad move though, RS is damaged beyond salvage.

BorisMelnik• 12 years ago

It is unfortunate but I think a lot of the people that are keeping Radio Shack alive are the people that shop there out of pity and love for what 'once was' such as myself. Very sad, I hope they make a turnaround, and gain some focus. They are truly a brand I would be loyal to pretty much no matter what they did.

carrja99• 12 years ago

My very first computer was a TRS-80... what a joy to hack on as a wonder eyed eight year old.

beloch• 12 years ago

In Canada, radio shack re-branded themselves as "The Source". I found this out because one day I needed some banana plugs in a hurry and, for the first time in nearly a decade, thought of radio shack. I went to a nearby mall where I knew there was a radio shack (because I walked past it fairly regularly). I went in and couldn't find anything even resembling a part.

I spoke to a very bored cashier and said, "Wasn't this store a Radio Shack before?".

"Yes!", he said "We changed the name."

"Oh. What happened to your parts section?"

"We got rid of it."

"Why did you change your name? Radio Shack must have been one of the most recognizable brands out there!"

"Well, I guess it was recognizable for the wrong reasons."

"Ooooh".

When I thought about it, the main reason I hadn't set food in a Radio Shack store for years was because the parts section had been shrinking (and becoming more neglected and disorganized) year after year. The store was gradually being taken over by either stuff you could buy cheaper elsewhere or Radio Shack exclusive junk that would break if you looked at it wrong. Instead of focusing on the stuff that at least some people need, Radio Shack focused on the stuff nobody wants.

gp2000• 12 years ago

They were forced to change the name as they had lost the rights to use it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(retailer)

Briefly: international Radio Shack stores were put under control of InterTan, a Tandy spinoff. When Circuit City bought InterTan, Tandy cancelled the licensing agreement to the Radio Shack name.

foz• 12 years ago

We can see echoes of this in the current mad dash by the Silicon Valley giants to become conglomerates. Google, Facebook and others also fear that their original mission will become obsolete and so they are buying anything new for billions of dollars to avoid a fate like RadioShack’s.

The article lost me on this point. I think Google and Facebook are trying to aggressively expand the reach of their original mission, and not acting out of fear that they will fail like RadioShack has.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Such an interesting story. To really appreciate it you have to understand how central it was to the "tech" scene in the late late 70's and 80's.

During those years RadioShack was the maker movement. All the stuff you see today, Arduinos, pretty much everything in the AdaFruit[1] shop, that was RadioShack then. And unlike the Internet (or Jameco, or JDR, or Mouser or MPJ or any of a number of mail order places, you could walk out and get a resistor right now and the transistor you needed to finish a project or try something out.

Several things have conspired to make that harder, not the least of which is soldering got harder, chips got more complex with less documentation, and for a long long time "kids" could care less about building stuff. Now that its somewhat cool again they don't have a good 'tech' craft store.

For a while I fantasized about starting a store chain called 'Prototype Electronics' that would be focused on just that mission. Helping people get the stuff they need at a price they can afford to make cool things. I thought it might be fun to open up 'kiosk' type stores in makerspaces where the makerspace could share some of the revenue. Such a place would sell filament for 3D printers for example, and the RAMPS boards, and something like 80/20 materials, maybe the MicroRAX line. The trick being there would be certain things you could go in there knowing they would have it, cables and such sure, but things like a stepper motor or a common driver transistor. Sadly I don't see 'Hobbyist Retail Store' on the YC RFS page :-) a lot of work for relatively small margins.

[1] One very credible path might be to take the AdaFruit website, buy enough stuff to stock 1,000 stores in towns across the country, and see how it works out.

WalterBright• 12 years ago

Weeelll, I always thought the RS stuff was rather inferior, for example, the soldering irons were not good. The Heathkit versions were much better.

But far and away my favorite store was the EE supply shop in the subbasement of the Steele building at Caltech. It was absolutely stuffed floor to ceiling with parts, and in a very small room. There was everything needed to build everything from stereo amplifiers to radio equipment to digital electronics.

I'm reminded of Tacoma Screw, a local chain that specializes in machine bolts and screws. It sounds too specialized to be viable, but it's a great place to get very good quality fasteners. I use them for my car, they're far better than hardware or auto store fasteners.

frankacter• 12 years ago

When I was a child my parents both worked full time jobs and could not afford a day care service. They left me, a 7 year old, at the local Radio Shack because it was a place that kept my attention for hours while they worked.

When the first Tandy's started coming in I would spend a lot of time learning how they worked and how to program them to do things. Customers took notice of this young kid and his abilities and wanted it for themselves and their family. Over time the staff recognized the amount of sales I was generating and provided my Mom my "referral cut".

From that early exposure I may not have had otherwise, computers and technology went on to shape my life and are core to the successes I've enjoyed over the years.

While I can't speak to Radio Shacks business models, I am thankful for the shelter and education that one store and their staff provided me.

sjg007• 12 years ago

Funny if that would happen today, the cops would be called, your parents jailed, and you would be taken away.

fit2rule• 12 years ago

Radio Shack should take more cues from the Hackerspace scene and actually turn their stores into functional commercial hacker spaces .. like, with a "Genius-bar" like atmosphere where you can go in, solder stuff up, buy parts, get assistance from professionals, and so on.

I wouldn't be where I am today without the Radio Shacks and Dick Smith Electronics shops of the 70's and early 80's .. there were many a glorious day spent, hacking away in their computer section, or talking to their knowledgeable staff who - besides being able to operate a cash machine, could also tell their MOSFET's from their NPN's and not only that: they enjoyed helping their customers. A lot of that was lost over the decades, but I really believe that there is a generation of hackers out there ready to rediscover the joys of going to a well-stocked hacker-friendly electronics shop for assistance. It has to be focused around the hackerspace scene though, because that is where the real market for electronics and technology parts lies .. and in this day and age of Internet-economies (seedstudio, lady ada, et al) there has to be a corporate culture which understands the nature of the scene: its all about the kids, yo, and in particular - the kids who would be able to repair that pinball machine and CAT-can equipment, if .. only .. they had .. the right parts.

bachmeier• 12 years ago

Radio Shack has been doomed for more than two decades. I remember my first visit to a Best Buy in the early 1990's. The store was clean, they had lots of inventory, and most importantly, the employees understood the concept of service. The few times that I'd go to Radio Shack after that, it was because I had to, not because I wanted to. Service matters, and Radio Shack's management operated as if they were your only option for too long.

cmdrfred2• 12 years ago

6ft micro usb cable: Radioshack $9.99 Monoprice $2.59 Business isn't going to boom when you charge 3.8 times as much as your competitors.

clebio8• 12 years ago

Please, let RadioShack hire Bret Victor as their Johnny Ive-style visionary: http://vimeo.com/97903574

Thriptic• 12 years ago

I worked at RadioShack one summer about 5 years ago during college, and it is frankly not surprising to me that the business is failing.

RadioShack was never able to offer competitive pricing on anything besides cell phones while I worked there, and would frequently employ somewhat dubious business tactics when it came to pricing (permanent "sales" on many things like batteries, "sales" where the sale price was the same as the normal retail price which was only disclosed in small type on the bottom of the pricing label).

RadioShack had an employee compensation system which STRONGLY incentivized cell phone sales resulting in the infamous aggressive phone pushing. At RadioShack you were (and maybe still are?) paid minimum wage plus you received a percentage of the gross store revenue each day if it exceeded the daily sales target (a few thousand iirc), a fixed amount for each extended warranty sold ($1-2 iirc), and an amount for each phone sold (something like $20-50). At our store we never had the customer volume to hit our sales targets, and so the only way we could make money was to sell phones.

The employee turnover at my store was insanely high, and none of the employees knew anything about electronics (including myself at the time), computers, or AV equipment. This was generally OK though, as most of our customers were also not tech savvy and couldn't tell the difference. Customers overwhelmingly came in to buy AV cabling, batteries, digital TV antennas, and analog to digital set top boxes. We never sold a TV or any other high value item while I was there.

Perhaps RadioShack will be able to pivot, but if not, I don't think the world will be that worse off.

As an aside, I felt bad pushing phones and worse charging ignorant people $30 for an HDMI cable that could be had from eforcity for under a dollar, and would therefore frequently steer customers away towards Amazon for such items. This practice somewhat perversely earned me regular customers, and by the end of the summer I was running what amounted to an off the books IT support desk out of the store where people would bring in their laptops and phones and I would troubleshoot their problems for 50-100 bucks. Thanks for providing me with retail space for my small business RadioShack!

golemotron• 12 years ago

My favorite memory of RadioShack was the free flashlights. Every couple of weeks, there would be a coupon in the newspaper for a giant flashlight. They were wonderful. You could cast a beam at the top of a tree a block away. The only thing was - they took 5 or 6 D cell batteries to work, and you had to buy them.

You could call it brilliant marketing or a little douche-y. In either case, we had fun. Fond memories.

mcculley• 12 years ago

I last went into a Radio Shack about ten years ago. As someone whose first computer experiences were on a TRS-80 Model III and Color Computer, I was mortified to see them selling an HP branded Apple iPod (Yes, such a thing existed. I had to look it up to make sure my memory wasn't deceiving me. What a great example of adding cost with no value: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod+HP). The young sales clerk didn't understand my discomfort. I had to explain that Radio Shack formerly actually made things, they didn't just act as the last in a line of middlemen. I had to explain to him that HP also formerly made some really cool hardware. It says something that Apple was able to turn both of these companies into sales channels while building their own retail outlets.

kator• 12 years ago

I used to hang out at a "Radio Shack Computer Store" in high school. One day the manager said a businessman was coming in to see the TRS-80 Model 16 he had on the floor and that he had no idea what to show him. I had been playing with it for a while (tricked him into giving me root) and I hooked up a couple of TTY's to it and setup the accounting software they had on the shelf with some dummy data. The customer came in, I demo'd it all to him showed him how someone could change a customer on one terminal and the person on another terminal would see the change. He bought it on the spot. The total was $20,000 with all the parts, TTY's, terminals and everything. Needless to say from that day forward the manager of that computer store gave me free reign. I could order anything from the catalog they didn't have on the floor and as soon as it came in I'd set it up and play with it and then connect it to the floor setup. I'd demo using multiple printers (A/B for Dot Matrix -vs- Daisy Wheel) and other cool features. Over a time I started getting requests to help people set this stuff up in their offices and that lead to my first business when I was in 10th grade.

I keep thinking RS could join forces with someone like Adafruit and create this same thing around the Maker movement. That said, I'm not sure the retail space and labor costs plus insurance would pay off, it would be a tricky model. But if somehow they could capture and bottle up this sort of thing for the next generation of technologists and do it at a scale that paid the bills they'd be back in the pole position on a massive trend.

However, with online purchases and AdaFruit being able to deliver stuff to me in time for my "weekend hardware time" I'm not sure there is a place for this in the malls of America. It would require a massive cash infusion and a complete redesign from top down of incentives and management to even get a crack at it. Perhaps someone with the money will buy the name and retail space and gut the rest and try a shot at it. That said I think stuff like TechShop [1] might already be headed there and they're aware of the challenges of cost of space and having the right vibe for hackers.

It's easy to underestimate just how insanely expensive retail space is in a mall, plus having labor, insurance and marketing costs it would be hard to justify selling parts against companies that have 1/10th the cost in their business models. In order for RS to succeed it would need to focus on the personal one on one wonder and discovery experience. That's harder then it sounds to staff and execute against and maintain margins to support the costs to operate the business. If I had the capital to fund it I'd love to take a run at something like this but it would have to be a big change and most likely the best route would be to take them private so you can make brutal sweeping changes rapidly and get the right kind of people in along with rebuilding the culture and the branding. Even after all that it would require a burn rate on a daily basis that would equal what some startups spend in a year. I’m not sure you could make the argument that it would be money well spent. If I were going long and had the capital I’d love to dig in and work out the model but the scale of this thing will most likely never allow the kind of entrepreneurial sprit it needs to be revived unless Elon Musk is bored and wants to back it, but I think he’s a bit busy.

[1] http://www.techshop.ws/

api_or_ipa• 12 years ago

If RadioShack wants to survive, it needs to get back to it's roots: DIY hardware.

Right now, if I walk into a RadioShack, their employees are incompetent in even basic DIY electronics and their selection is sad.

Hire passionate DIY and hacker type employees, and start basically operating as a retail version of Digikey.

How many times as one of us realized in the middle of a build that we need a .2omh resistor and we concede that an online shipment will take a few days to get here?

A History of Misses for RadioShack

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