
RadioShack Suffered as Free Time Evaporated - larrys
http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-suffered-as-free-time-evaporated-1423441817
======
Thrymr
"Americans are too busy to tinker" is not a very plausible premise for Radio
Shack's demise. Others in this tread have pointed out Radio Shack's
longstanding problems and failure to find a niche in the modern retail world.
I'll just add that if it's really the lack of leisure time that's driving the
decline, other leisure-based businesses (travel, entertainment, etc.) would be
failing as well, and they're not.

According to the Economist [0], "American men toil for pay nearly 12 hours
less per week, on average, than they did 40 years ago—a fall that includes all
work-related activities, such as commuting and water-cooler breaks". The big
caveat to that is that people with more education are working more, and those
with less education are working less. That may have some part in it, but the
truth is that if Radio Shack was selling products that enough people wanted,
they would find the time for them. Lack of time didn't kill them.

[0] [http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-
specials/21636612-ti...](http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-
specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-
distribution-why)

[edit: s/nice/niche]

~~~
s_q_b
Radioshack's demise was precipitated by a number of factors. In no particular
order the proximate causes were:

1\. A drop in retail sales of electronics from in-person stores as the average
consumer purchases more and more online, benefitting from the cost savings due
to economies of scale and lack of overhead provided by online retailers such
as Amazon.

2\. A rapid fall in demand for the consumer products Radioshack offered:
camcorders, cassette players, digital cameras, and prior to that CB radios.
That trend accelerated as the functions of various devices were taken over by
smartphones.

3\. A failure to recapture the resurgent maker movement, despite a rather
valiant last minute effort.

Radioshack used to be a vital resource for makers. Mostly they stocked
breadboards, transistors, capacitors, etc. in at least one third of their
retail space.

When I was a child, and my father first introduced me to electronics in the
mid '90s, I loved Radioshack and visited at least once a week. The staff at
Radioshack could give advice that my dad (a chemical engineer and MBA by
education, civil engineer by profession, who built a simple computer out of
transistors in the 1970s from scavenged parts from pinball machines when he
was 13, so no novice) didn't know.

A few months ago a local maker space opened and I enthusiastically signed up
for classes on their machines. Ready to jump in, I figured I would build out
some software while I waited to be safety certified on the Tormach CNC and
various 3D printers, but their inexpensive Raspberry Pi and Pi competitors
were sold out.

Out of curiosity, I stopped into Radioshack, since there was one in the same
mall. Lo and behold, most of the space formerly occupied by those parts was
now filled with modern maker components: Arduinos, Beaglebones, shields to add
capabilities, elegant project cases, various add-ons. I picked up everything I
needed to get my project up and running on a Beaglebone Black.

It was so much more convenient than waiting for Amazon to deliver that over
the next couple days I went back for more components. Radioshack, for the
first time in years, seemed like a place I wanted to frequent, a stopgap
between my local maker space and Amazon. But there was one essential element
missing: expertise. The staff was mostly clueless about the differences
between the products they stocked.

Radioshack failed because it failed to pivot to a more successful business
model in time. They tried a scatter-shot approach, pinning their hopes on
various experimental focal points: cellphones for a time, high end stereos,
video games, etc.

Hours worked is simply an unlikely cause of the company's decline. Americans
are still tinkering, and the mythos of the lone inventor is alive and well in
American psychology.

~~~
danielweber
Just because the maker movement exists, it doesn't mean it's big enough for
over 5000 stores. And they couldn't staff up in people with maker expertise
while also serving their old market -- whatever it was -- of unskilled
salesman.

The company is _full_ of management who know the old way of doing business. A
great many of them would have to be fired to switch to the new way of
business.

Humans have incredibly loss aversion. The reason the story of Aron Ralston
cutting his arm off to escape that boulder is so fascinating is that most
people wouldn't do it. Give all the management -- not just the people at the
top, but all levels down to store managers -- the option between facing the
known pain of needing to cut a bunch of stores, or that Something Magical Will
Happen and they and all their friends get to keep their jobs, and the second
is the choice that will win, hands down.

~~~
s_q_b
I agree with your logic in the second and third paragraphs entirely. I won't
pretend to be smart enough to know how to have saved that company, but surely
any viable solution would have involved reducing their physical retail
footprint by a significant amount.

>Just because the maker movement exists, it doesn't mean it's big enough for
over 5000 stores.

Surely not. But as another commenter pointed out, Radioshack has always
catered to the enthusiast, relying upon them to drive sales of more consumer
oriented product.

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

It was a crappy business decision from the top that just took years and years
to manifest as catastrophe.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I totally reject this article's somewhat Marxist undertone that RadioShack's
> demise was due to Americans' lack of demand for hobby electronics

How is such an explicitly market-based argument "somewhat Marxist"?

~~~
tlb
Marx predicted that tensions inherent in capitalism would cause the system to
destroy itself. Radio Shack's story seems like what he thought would happen to
the entire system: relentless expansion beyond its core mission, in order to
serve capitalism's need for unlimited growth, caused its inevitable downfall.

~~~
marincounty
I get skewered, but in this case maybe Marx was right? I thought they had too
many stores. In my neck of the woods, they had three within 10 minutes
driving?

This company seemed to be having trouble even before the Internet. They seemed
to run the stores like it was still the 50's?(demanding ties, while paying
minimum wage=grouchy employees). The website was always terrible. Marketing
was terrible. Seemed top heavy with assistant regional managers, corporate big
wigs, etc.

My last time shopping there I bought a tube if Artic 5 to reball a faulty HP
graphic chip. The price was more than 2-3 online competitors price. The nice
guy helping me said, "You are not are typical customer." I knew what he meant,
and I was sad. I walked past the garbage near the front entrance, the dissy
array of phone plans, dodging marketing stands, and said goodby to the only
lonely employee." I knew that would be my last time in a Radio Shack. (The
only reason I can imagine why they loaded up the front of the stores with--
crap, is because maybe we don't tinker as much as I want to think? I know you
people do, but the average consumer--I've seen so many people roll their eyes
when I tell them I can fix it. "Just buy a new one!" As to crafts, like sewing
and leather work--I think people will get back into it, but right now it's
just easier to buy because their is a lack of time. I will never forget the
neck Ties and the perpetual help wanted sign though.

~~~
tlb
Marx was right, in the same way Malthus was right. Excessive growth can lead
to collapse of individual companies or communities. Both failed to appreciate
that in globally distributed, heterogenous, decentralized economies not
everything collapses at the same time, and new things grow in the spaces left
by the old.

------
sokoloff
Article> many in the maker movement can’t comprehend why their beloved
RadioShack is failing.

Really? I would think that anyone who had tried to purchase parts for a maker-
type project in their local RadioShack would understand in the hour it took
the clueless clerk to point the prospective customer past the displays of cell
phones, $30 HDMI cables, and RC toys to the lone, dusty cabinet of mis-filed
and comically over-priced components.

I have a soft spot in my heart for TRS, taught myself BASIC one summer on a
TRS-80, bought every Forrest Mims engineer's notebook, loved my 50-in-1
electronics kit, and even today occasionally use a through-hole resistor from
my collection of RS parts. I wish they weren't going away, but I sure as hell
comprehend _WHY_ they died...

~~~
mindslight
Or not even needing the clerk, getting your item and observing the ridiculous
prices they had on larger items. I stopped in to my local Radio Shack the
other day to check if they were having the clearance yet and witnessed a
5-port 10/100 switch priced at $70. Meanwhile you can get a gigabit one at
Newegg for $25 (without sale). It's almost if they took the margin they were
able to obtain on electronic components and applied it to everything else in
the store, managing to stay alive from the occasional sucker who thought it an
appropriate place to buy tech.

~~~
flyinghamster
I had an eight-port switch whose wall wart PSU had failed. I thought, "Hey,
why not go over to Radio Shack and get a PSU, instead of pitching what was
otherwise a perfectly good switch?"

Well, as it turned out, RS wanted as much for a suitable wall wart as it would
cost to buy a complete new switch elsewhere.

------
larrys
To get behind paywall google "RadioShack Suffered as Free Time Evaporated"

This should also work:

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fradioshack-
suffered-as-free-time-
evaporated-1423441817&ei=7t3YVPCjJ8jnsASX8oHgBQ&usg=AFQjCNHGMnVNMPDo9_pfHPflP1JNgsk03A&bvm=bv.85464276,d.cWc&cad=rja)

------
VLM
All authors should be required to view

[http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1984/](http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1984/)

before making conclusions.

I arbitrarily selected 1984 because my dad was occasionally working part time
at RS between programming contracts and it was before the arrival of Best Buy
and Walmart decimated consumer electronics sales. True, there were maybe one
quarter of the pages of the catalog devoted to parts. However, consider the
difference in commission between a 59 cent small signal NPN transistor, vs the
commission on a $349.95 police scanner or a $279.99 dual cassette deck or even
a $47.95 alarm clock radio. All that stuff came from Radio Shack before Best
Buy or Walmart. I think we bought a TV from Sears once when I was a kid. I
grew up with a Model 3 and Coco 1, 2, and 3 with microware OS-9 and the weird
pre ansi early K+R C language compiler and all that. Radio shack scanners,
even some ham radio gear.

The highest profit margin in the store was parts. The problem is nobody buys
parts. So you make more money off one clock radio per week than 5 transistors
per month. Youngsters in the HN readership don't understand that Radio Shack
used to sell consumer electronics, so they think RS never did and it always
lived entirely off 59 cent transistor sales. Not so. (edited to add business
advice that when you have a main line and a side line and the main line goes
away, that doesn't automatically mean you've always been a leader in the side
line, and comically younger people are accusing RS of trying to become a best
buy, when RS WAS the best buy before BB existed...)

Basically RS lost consumer electronics in the 80s to 90s with the arrival of
the big box stores and then it was all down hill till this year. It just took
them longer to die than the typical victim of the big box stores.

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

------
diydsp
For ~50 years, Radio Shack rode major trends in consumer electronics quite
well. Amateur radios, walkie-talkies, CB radios, home stereos, home computers,
cell phones, they did it all (except interestingly PCs they didn't do so
great).

It was only when electronics became so mainstream, competition increased and
profits became marginal they couldn't survive.

It's too bad, but if we're smart instead of over-analyzing this, we'll should
keep our eyes peeled for the next industries that will go under.

~~~
warnhardcode
They did PCs fine for a little while. Tandy 1000s were popular back in the
day.

~~~
mkr-hn
My first computer was a display model Tandy 1000 HX. I was young and didn't
know much about the internal bits, but I did know rapidly turning it off and
on made a lot of neat things show on the screen. Whoops.

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

~~~
mark-r
This. The time when you could build your own computer from parts has been long
past.

The 3D printer revolution is something that could have brought them back to
their roots, but it's not big enough (yet) to sustain such a huge company. And
unless you accidentally walked past a store, you'd have no way of knowing
what's on offer - they haven't been a compelling destination for a long time
too.

~~~
nkohari
> The time when you could build your own computer from parts has been long
> past.

This is simply not true. You may _choose_ not to build your own computer, but
the components are no less available than before -- in fact, commoditization
has made them more affordable than ever before.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well, you can put a computer in a box, sure. But build your own used to mean a
lot more than a chip or two.

~~~
nkohari
If you mean building a computer from fundamental components, you can still do
that too. It just won't feel quite as magical today as it did in the 70s or
80s because of the ubiquity of modern computers.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I guess I meant building a computer with a chance to make real decisions. E.g.
busses, interrupt architecture, memory controller etc. Now its all integrated.
You use a certain chip; you need a certain chipset to support it. Your project
becomes cut-and-paste of the single supported design. Why do it at all if you
can't change anything significant? "I built it myself, but no, its not
different in any important way from one you could buy off the shelf cheaper"?

~~~
mkr-hn
You can probably hire a shop in China to manufacture your design for not too
much.

------
vibrolax
As an electronics hobbyist since the 1960's, the only places where I have ever
been able to walk in and buy parts with good service were quirky little shops
run by like-minded proprietors. I do not think a corporate business model for
B&M stores catering to non-mainstream hobbies has ever existed.

RS's transition into cell phones, a mass market commodity, was perhaps the
only possible decision that could have maintained their enormous real estate
footprint. But with neither low prices nor excellent customer service, their
demise was just a matter of time.

The internet's capability to serve the long tail has enabled a golden age for
makers, with manufacturers and distributors of every scale providing products,
and forums where every manner of making is supported. What RadioShack and your
local electronics part counter was ever able to supply, even at their peak, is
pathetic compared with the present situation.

Yeah, we can't walk in and idly browse around for ideas and inspiration.
That's what your browser is for.

------
michaelbuddy
What is it about businesses and not being able to shrink and grow over time
appropriately. Everyone's bringing up what would and wouldn't work to sustain
Radio Shack's 5000 stores. Does any business model every involve shrinking to
accommodate or is it all about unsustainable growth and then bankruptcy and
golden parachutes for all the guys who fail to see anywhere past 3 quarters?

I just don't understand the lack of creativity when things start going south.
People try to hang onto what's not working until everything fails. Look at all
the spinoff retail opportunities there are. Convert these radio shacks into
this, and keep these like this. Then whatever works works, works and what
doesn't try again. Otherwise what is the point of selling cables for 50x
markup than having cash to keep on inventing.

------
fredfoobar42
Bull. Shit.

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

------
lnanek2
There are still some up and running electronics stores out there like Fry's
where I can build a PC from parts. If Radio Shack had stayed the same maybe
they would still be in business. Instead every year I walked in they were less
and less like that and more and more just prepackaged goods like cell phones
and toy cars. Half the time I went in the past couple years they didn't even
have whatever adapter or cable or solder or whatever I needed due to them
putting all their floor space toward competing with cell phone carriers and
Toys R Us.

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

------
thejaredhooper
I'd argue that the Radioshack's lack of attention to their role as a niche
vendor (tinkerer's resource) was the true cause of their demise. As a former
employee, I noticed that we continually downsized our parts section
(especially in malls) until it was almost nonexistent. There were plenty of
customers inquiring about capacitors and other small electric parts. We were
then forced to refer _those_ customers to a local niche store.

They were trying to hard to compete with Best Buy in their attempt to sell
cell phones and contracts. Poor business decision that led to them being taken
advantage of by the mobile carriers who increased market share with
RadioShack's assistance, but offered little in return.

By the way that they treated me, my manager and my fellow employees - I'm not
sad to see them go.

~~~
mindslight
And how much profit would those customers have given you? Each sale is tiny,
and repeat business is going to be for different obscure components, not for
more of the same.

With individual components being so cheap in quantity, people
(hobbyists/professionals) are only looking to solve an immediate problem, and
will then go place a larger order of assorted stock so that problem never
happens again. Radio Shack would have had to be a lot more intelligent about
which components they carried to ever function as anyone's "stock room". And
that possibility is further shot as the last of peoples' uncomfortableness
with online shopping fades.

I think there's perhaps still some room for selling a fewer skus of large
assortments (lower margin/overhead), but as part of a larger store that covers
the fixed costs and provides impulse buyers thinking about getting into the
hobby.

------
ctdonath
Free time didn't evaporate. People stopped (broadly speaking) trying to do
constructive hobbies in their free time. Radio Shack's high point was when
there were only ~3 TV stations available and movies were an event. In
parallel, the range of products available exploded, and the complexity of
hobby-type gadgets increased beyond hobbyist capability. Used to be one could,
say, go to Radio Shack and buy mundane parts to build a computer from scratch
- now you can get an HD-screen wireless-broadband dual-camera tablet for a
2-digit price tag ... what's the point of building?

Yes, there is a healthy & robust community of builders, hackers, & gadgeteers
- but they're outside of the mainstream, different from when people at large
built things out of boredom.

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

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

------
michaelbuddy
when I was in the job market in '00 I attended a Radio Shack job orientation.
Here's what they were after, people who would work for very low pay but who
made commission on cell phones. 95% cell phones in the orientation meeting, It
was all cell phones for them and as I observed for many years after. Because
it was all about commission and if you didn't sell mobile phones, you were not
gonna make any money. Now keep in mind I went to the radio shack because I was
interested in gadgets and building stuff. And when somebody needs a simple
cable replacement and they see that it's 17.99 for an rca cable that is 2.99
on Amazon, the customer feels burned by the same store that supposedly America
"trusted" for 70 years. Radio Shack could have merged with Monoprice 4 years
ago and kicked butt on that instead of competing with Best Buy, Toys R Us,
guitar center, batteries plus and Amazon all at the same time.

Now let's compare to say a home store. There are a lot of home stores, big and
small. Some do better than others, many try really hard to compete with Lowes
and HD by stocking really smartly. And they can keep people in through
relationships. Hiring old experts who can tell you how something is done, and
younger apprentice hands who can absorb a lot of info as well as lift 100 lbs
into your car like nothing. (again service mindset). Also big box home stores
do rentals and they also have classes. Camera shops also offer classes.

Radio Shack certainly sold *some cool stuff over the years but they never
could be a place I could trust or rely upon to carry anything specific. I
never felt like I got a good price on anything let alone a deal. The only time
I ever felt I paid regular price was when they happened to have a little cable
connector, it had no price and the manager was like eh just give me 1.99. He
made up the price according to what he thought it was worth, the same price I
thought it was probably worth. But you can bet had it had an active sku, it
would have been 7.99.

Radio Shack had so many opportunities to be a provider of cool things. They
could have even become a refurbish tech dealer selling lots of refurb game
systems and controllers and probably done well. I mean you look at it like,
what the hell were they even thinking for so long.

------
analog31
Christopher Mims related to Forrest Mims?

~~~
VLM
[http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SmokeSecret/smoke_...](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SmokeSecret/smoke_secret4.php)

Not a direct descendant, anyway. Forrest is a parental role model for my own
parenting, at least WRT science and hobbies. Cool dude.

