
A History of Misses for RadioShack - aaronbrethorst
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/for-radioshack-a-history-of-misses/
======
RickS
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.

~~~
danjayh
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_.

~~~
seanp2k2
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.

~~~
ploxiln
Not everyone lives in California. I did for 2 years after getting my BS in EE,
and Fry's was something I had never seen the like of in my life. Both northern
and southern Cali have an unusual concentration of electrical engineers.

RadioShack is the only retail store I have heard of, in Delaware or Maryland
or southern New Jersey, that has resistors, capacitors, bread boards, etc.

------
rdtsc
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/](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.

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

------
brudgers
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.

~~~
CamperBob2
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.

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

~~~
VLM
"No crazy markup either."

Possibly, the only thing in the store fitting that claim.

Not even sure its true. Went to the website and I can burn a gallon of gas and
an hour of time and pay local sales tax for $89.99. We'll round that up to
$100 for expenses and annoyance. I'd pay someone $5 to fetch it for me to
avoid the wasted time and having to wait in line and hear all about the great
deal they could offer on a cell phone, so I feel rounding up to $100 is fair.

Or UPS can drop one off tomorrow (well, worst case, Friday) for only $67.99
and ordering it takes less than a minute compared to the agony of going to RS.

So sure, I'll pay about 1/3 less to get it from Amazon.

If I have plenty of shipping time adafruit sells then for $55 (plus shipping,
they hide their shipping costs deep in the checkout process so I donno and I
won't shop there because I can't compare)

Digikey will match the price $55 and they're honest about shipping estimates
which would be $3.22 USPS first class (maybe), or $10 if I want UPS (eh, just
use amazon) And living nearby I'll get it tomorrow or Friday at worst.

Lets be realistic, I have a busy-ish day today and I can't get out to RS
anyway until maybe saturday, so Prime is not only cheaper but faster, and if I
had to squeeze every penny I could save another $5 or so by ordering from
digikey.

~~~
kbutler
> having to wait in line

No worries there.

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

------
fit2rule
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.

------
blackaspen
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
[http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-
ho...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-how-
radioshack-still-in-b,2190/) (2007)

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

------
caster_cp
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

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

Bad move though, RS is damaged beyond salvage.

------
jawns
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.

~~~
ghaff
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
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.

~~~
VLM
"there's something to be said for walking into a store and holding stuff in
your hands before buying it."

Yes, I always, every time, end up feeling "This is a PITA having to drive
across town and haul the screaming kids and coordinate schedules and park far
away and burn more than an hour of my life for the privilege of paying three
times as much as amazon prime for the same cable and argue with a teenage
sales droid about why I don't want a $25 extended warantee in case it breaks
(well, thats more a best buy thing, another place I never go to anymore). Oh
and I pay $99/yr or whatever it is for prime which I'm "wasting" if I'm not
using prime... I'm never going to this store again and next time I need a HDMI
cable I'm pulling out my phone 24x7 frictionless and paying $3 at Amazon, not
$10+ at RS after investing an hour". The next time I need a cable or gadget I
think about going back to a retail store, cringe a little inside, and whip out
the phone and order it online instead.

If you're into "real" electronics I live within 1 day shipping range of Thief
River Falls MN (aka digikey) so I pay for cheap shipping and get it the next
morning anyway, and there is a huge tigerdirect midwest shipping depot 1 UPS
day away (actually less, I've paid for 3 day shipping and gotten stuff in 12
hours before, that was weird). Deal Extreme can air ship me non-UL listed fake
FCC cert gray market stuff faster than I can get real stuff from California
for less than the shipping from CA, which always freaks me out.

Retail just doesn't have a purpose anymore other than perishable fresh food.
Its just obsolete. Like worrying about the disappearance of buggy whip
manufacturers, or horse stable facilities in major city downtowns.

(whoops edited to add there is one use for retail electronics and its
traveling. The only time in several years that I walked into a retail
electronics store was when my bluetooth earbud got drenched in a sudden
downpour and wouldn't come back to life while I was traveling far away from
home, and I kinda sorta needed it for a business conference call, so I paid 2x
amazon price at best buy for a replacement and was fairly happy to do so. So
airports, train stations, bus stations, tourist traps.)

~~~
hfsktr
"Retail just doesn't have a purpose anymore other than perishable fresh food.
Its just obsolete."

Not everyone has internet and not everyone has a credit card or debit card to
buy online. There are ways around those like a public library for internet and
a prepaid card.

It's not common to match all that but it will happen. Some people might even
like holding something before buying it (pictures can't tell you everything).

~~~
VLM
"Not everyone has internet and not everyone has a credit card or debit card to
buy online."

This seems to boil down to people who are removed from the modern economic
system are unable to participate in the modern economic system.

Another way to look at it is we strongly segregate by income, so its quite
possible retail will live for a little longer in poor urban areas, although it
will be doomed in the 'burbs and is already kinda doomed in rural areas.

"Some people might even like holding something before buying it"

I admit you're partially correct, my short list of "fresh produce" probably
needs clothing stores and plant nurseries/garden stores. And some crafts, when
I go to the woodworking store I pick thru the aisles finding just the right
piece of wood for the job. Fine art, hand made as opposed to mass produced
posters or whatever, is probably something best purchased in person.

------
lavamantis
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
IoT and tech classes for seniors.

------
pacaro
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

------
city41
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_
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.

------
WalterBright
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.

------
ChuckMcM
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.

------
Thriptic
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!

------
mcculley
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](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.

------
markbnj
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
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.

------
foz
_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.

------
bachmeier
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.

------
api_or_ipa
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?

------
mherkender
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.

------
golemotron
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.

------
damian2000
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
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](http://www.jaycar.com.au/stores.asp).

~~~
damian2000
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.

------
mikeleeorg
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.

------
BorisMelnik
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.

------
CamperBob2

       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.

~~~
Lagged2Death
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.

~~~
cmdrfred
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."

~~~
Lagged2Death
20 years in the future? It sounds pretty accurate to me _right now_.

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

------
cmdrfred
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.

------
carrja99
My very first computer was a TRS-80... what a joy to hack on as a wonder eyed
eight year old.

------
kator
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/](http://www.techshop.ws/)

