OT: The Death of Radio Shack

[BigDumbDinosaur]

I was never a user of any Radio Shack computers and most of my purchases from RS over the years were components and other basic items for small projects—their plastic project boxes were particularly handy. If I needed a certain sized resistor and I didn't have any laying about, a quick trip to Radio Shack took care of the matter. That, of course, is no more, and now the only practical way to get electronic parts is to order on-line.

Anyhow, in one of my searches for something I came across this essay on the death of Radio Shack (original link broken—this one updated with a Wayback Machine Link found by Garth). Written by a former Tandy Corporation employee, it's definitely instructive for anyone wishing to turn a going concern into a financial disaster.

[cbmeeks]

If it weren't for Radio Shack, Johnny-5 would have not survived.

I got a bad taste for Radio Shack employees years ago. Mainly for the following reasons:

1) I typically knew MUCH more than they did...especially when it came to electronic components. And I'm certainly no expert.

2) I walked in there once with a Gameboy cartridge programmer (looking for a PSU for it) and one of the employees literally walked over to me and yanked it out of my hand and asked what it was.

3) I hate stores that constantly ask me for personal information for every purchase. Ask me to join some membership with every purchase. Or ask me if I want to buy other high-profit items like batteries or extended warranties.

The only redeeming quality about RS was, for my area, they were the ONLY place I could buy a capacitor or pack of resistors without going online. Of course, the price was about 50x higher.

I will say this...Tandy deserves much more respect in the history of computers than they get.

[8BIT]

My personal story of Radio Shack is not much better. It was 1977 and I was 13 years old. I saved up and bought an analog multi-meter kit from them. I followed every step of the assembly directions and upon completion, it did not work. The needle didn't move on any setting.

I took it back and asked them to test it. They offered to repair it but at a cost higher than the kit cost me. My parents even argued with them and called a corporate office but sadly, I got no support. Seems a kit has no warranty and they all assumed a 13 year old kid built it wrong.

I dug it out once a year and fiddled with it but never got it to work. Finally, at age 17, after tracing every component with my Dad's meter, I decided to touch the three components the manual said "DO NOT TOUCH" These were 3 potentiometers that were "factory set for calibration". Low and behold, after moving one of them and then putting it back, it started working. It was an open circuit in the pot. So, I felt vindicated that I did nothing wrong and that it was a factory error. I used that meter for many years afterwards.

However, I never shopped there again and I was not sad to see them go.

Daryl

[BigDumbDinosaur]

cbmeeks wrote:

I got a bad taste for Radio Shack employees years ago. Mainly for the following reasons:

1) I typically knew MUCH more than they did...especially when it came to electronic components. And I'm certainly no expert.

Radio Shack store employees were mostly paid subsistence wages, a policy that was guaranteed to not attract the best and brightest. Only the store manager made a half-way decent paycheck.

[GARTHWILSON]

Radio Shack was one of the wonderful things I "discovered" as a 14-year-old when we came back to the U.S. in 1974.  At the time, Lafayette was a competitor that I also enjoyed.  A year later we came to the city we live in now, and there were a good dozen or so electronics stores of different types within bike-riding range, including surplus.  It was wonderful!!  But especially as I learned more about electronics and found better places to get components, Radio Shack quickly lost favor with me.  Nevertheless, I went there once in a while to get things like project boxes, prototyping boards, and jacks.

In the last decade or two, my position has been much like cbmeeks'.  I'd go in knowing exactly what I wanted, having the catalog number, and knowing exactly where it is, only to be slowed down by some new employee who's trying to be helpful but doesn't know anything.  I always wanted to tell them that I started shopping at Radio Shack long before they were born.  It was disappointing to see RS decline into being hardly more than a toy store and phone store.  It's fun to reminisce in looking through old catalogs I remember though, at http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/ .  I kind of wish I had kept one catalog from every few years though.  The only one I have is from 2002.  I did keep a few Heathkit catalogs from the 70's.

[cbmeeks]

GARTHWILSON wrote:

It's fun to reminisce in looking through old catalogs I remember though, at http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/ . I kind of wish I had kept one catalog from every few years though. The only one I have is from 2002. I did keep a few Heathkit catalogs from the 70's.

I say the same thing about the Sears catalogs. I tried to buy one on eBay the other day. It was the Christmas 1982 (IIRC). I forget the exact year but it was early 80's.

The winning bid was over $50. Too rich for me. I want one but not that bad.

BTW....too soon for an "OT:The Death of Sears" topic??

[floobydust]

First, enjoyed reading the article, so thanks to BDD for posting it.

For me, RS (we used to calll it Rat Shack in NJ) wasn't usually frequented that much. Growing up in Monmouth County, NJ (which is a great place to be from), we had a Lafayette nearby, a Heathkit store, a Radio Shack of course and the U.S. Army's Corcom center located in Eatontown, NJ within Fort Monmouth... and Bendix right down the road from them.

In between those two, there was Atkinson & Smith, an old school electronics distributor that stocked a ton of great quality parts, from known vendors including Allen-Bradley, Ohmite, Centralab, Sprague, Mallory, Bud, Premier, Alpha, Xcelite... you name it, tools and test equipment too. The best part of A&S was their upstairs floor... the Surplus Room. Basically it was tons of top-quality mil-spec parts that came from Fort Monmouth or Bendix. I was able to buy JAN spec vacuum tubes, 50 cents for small 7- and 9-pin types and $1 for octals, 4-pin DHTs, etc. and a couple of bucks for brand new 808 transmitting triodes. Top quality (tube) sockets in ceramic were also the norm for 10 cents to 25 cents. I was a spoiled kid growing up back then.... and all of my allowance was spent there.

After transferring to Florida in '84, I also found a great local distributor, but RS was much closer and in many cases would just run in for a few needed piece parts for a project, plus they (RS) was open on weekends. I never really had a bad experience there, but the local employees never knew that much... so I would politely smile, say I knew what I needed and just walk to the rear of the store and search for the needed parts.

In any case, the article was quite telling... and I'm sure there are some stories about the fate of Lafayette stores as well. Even Sears has filed recently... an old business model simply doesn't hold up forever. Even Atkinson & Smith eventually closed their doors as well. Seems we're now left with mail-order distributors, ebay and some Far East suppliers.

I mostly use Mouser, followed by Digikey, Newark and some others as well for most of my parts needs. For some components I have to go to the source or some mom&pop shops that stock specialized items. I just wish good vacuum tubes were still being made at reasonable prices

[Mike Naberezny]

For many years, I've been building most of my projects on Radio Shack (Archer) boards using point-to-point soldering. One of the first projects I ever published online, my 6504 SBC, was built on a Radio Shack board in 1996. There are photos of it on the webpage but the quality isn't very good. That was the best we could get from my friend's new digital camera, which was a novelty at the time. I've built many projects since then, usually on a Radio Shack board.

I've been buying my parts online from places like Digi-Key, Mouser, and eBay for a long time, but I'd still buy a board at my local Radio Shack store. There used to be a store within a couple of miles of my place, then it closed. I started going to the one in the next town over, then eventually that one closed. I had to drive even further to find another one. I bought their last 5 boards before they closed too.

In early 2017, I noticed that the boards were on sale at Radio Shack's website. The prices were less than half of what I was paying at the stores, so I bought a large box of them. I usually cut a board to get multiple projects out of it, so I hope this will be a lifetime supply.

Box of Radio Shack boards

[GARTHWILSON]

Mike Naberezny wrote:

In early 2017, I noticed that the boards were on sale at Radio Shack's website. The prices were less than half of what I was paying at the stores, so I bought a large box of them. I usually cut a board to get multiple projects out of it, so I hope this will be a lifetime supply.

Same here; not a large box, but I do have two dozen RS boards.

[barrym95838]

floobydust wrote:

... In between those two, there was Atkinson & Smith, an old school electronics distributor that stocked a ton of great quality parts, from known vendors including Allen-Bradley, Ohmite, Centralab, Sprague, Mallory, Bud, Premier, Alpha, Xcelite... you name it, tools and test equipment too. The best part of A&S was their upstairs floor... the Surplus Room ...

Over here in Sacramento, it was Marvac Electronics, and for several decades in the last century it had many of the same treasures you describe. It is now a "mercado y carniceria". Maybe "8BIT" Daryl remembers ... he's a neighbor of mine.

I still have my RS 40-in-1 and 100-in-1 experiment kits (bought in the 1970s) in the attic, but I don't think they're in very good condition. My Realistic walkie talkies and my "electronic siren" solder together kit are lost to the sands of time ...

realistic-transistor-walkie-talkies_1_9dfefa780908d18846cae83c49a05e04.jpg (18.66 KiB) Viewed 5672 times

[8BIT]

barrym95838 wrote:

Over here in Sacramento, it was Marvac Electronics, and for several decades in the last century it had many of the same treasures you describe. It is now a "mercado y carniceria". Maybe "8BIT" Daryl remembers ... he's a neighbor of mine.

Yes, I had been to their store many times. I also visited the surplus store near American River College when it was open... the name escapes me now.

Edit - found it - it was HFE Electronics on Amber Lane. That was less than 5 minutes from my home... I spent a lot of time there just browsing!

It was always fun digging through the bins looking for bits to build something out of.

Daryl

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barrym95838 wrote:

Over here in Sacramento, it was Marvac Electronics

In Chicago, we had Allied Electronics' big store on South Pulaski Road. For a kid into electronics in the late 1950s, as I was, entering that store was akin to being given free run of the Hershey's chocolate factory.

Alas, by the end of the 1960s, that South Pulaski neighborhood was becoming dangerous to enter—the merry crack of gunfire was heard all-too-often. My last trip there was in early 1969, when I purchased parts to build two 100 watt tube amps for use in a friend's stereo. In 1970, Allied was acquired by Tandy Corporation and moved out of Chicago. I still do business with them, especially for electromechanical parts.

[GARTHWILSON]

It looks like they're trying to come back:
http://www.fortworthbusiness.com/news/r ... d0aa1.html

[BigDumbDinosaur]

GARTHWILSON wrote:

It looks like they're trying to come back:
http://www.fortworthbusiness.com/news/r ... d0aa1.html

If they continue to follow the path that the "old" RS stores took of not having people on-staff who know the products they are selling, the store won't last. Although some business moves made by Tandy were complicit in the demise of the Radio Shack brand, the fact that any of us here knew more about what was in their stores than their sales staff was most of their undoing. Also, much of what RS is selling is stuff you can get at Walmart. It's definitely an uphill battle to compete against that colossus, despite Walmart's dearth of knowledgeable sales people.

[cbmeeks]

Agreed. If they want to come back, they need to cut out a niche for themselves.

1) Hire knowledgeable staff.

2) Quit trying to be the next T-Mobile or Sprint. In fact, don't even sell phones.

3) RS can't compete with China. But it sure would be nice if I could go to the mall and buy some standard caps, resistors, etc. Have a decent stock. Sometimes I just need a few and don't want to wait 2 months for the slow boat.

4) Make a profit, but don't be obscene. I would be happy paying $5 for a pack of resistors. But it needs to be more than FIVE resisitors! Maybe that pack of 100 resistors costs $0.50 from China with free shipping. RS should charge $5 for 50+ of the same resistors. That's still a profit for them and I don't mind the $4.50 hit. It's a low enough impulse buy where the convenience is worth it to me.

5) Sell good components.

6) Have various protoboards, "Arduino kits (build your own)", many types of wire, etc. Basically goodies guys like us enjoy tinkering with.

7) Don't try to be a toy store. Sell to kids? Absolutely! But sell them the same stuff we adults want. Just packaged for kids. Things like electronic kits that have GOOD components and fun stuff like weather sensors and servos.

8) Research and create 2-4 robots with a clever RS brand. Something like the old Robbie the Robot but branded for RS. Something you build and program. Make it Arduino based and have different levels from small kids (follow the light type) up to teens and beginning adults (some AI, arms, etc.). Something that can be built on over time. Not junk! Real, good quality robots that can be expanded. There's real room for growth here!

9) Stop trying to sell me batteries!

10) Stay out of the credit/finance department! Don't try to be "RS the lender" with credit cards. Just ask Sears and JC Penny (remember, "Just Cash Penny?"). That's exactly what they did. Pushed their garbage financing to people instead of focusing on great products and great experiences. Excel at what RS used to be but make it better. Remove the tarnish of the RS brand.


I've got a fondness for RS. Every time I'm at a thrift store and I see something branded RS I almost always buy it. I just found a RS programming book for the 8080 that was published in 1977!!! Hardcover and it cost $1.50. :-)

I say bring back RS. But let's hope they don't do more of the same.

BTW, looks like Toys-R-Us is making a comeback too. I could start a whole thread on them but that is too OT.