Remembering Radio Shack
Posted by freedomforall 10 years, 6 months ago to Business
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When I arrived, all I saw was an empty building with the Radio Shack sign removed. Another business has moved in since.
I know where another Radio Shack is but at an inconvenient location in my west of Birmingham satellite cities area.
Not local at all, providing it is still there.
Oh, it's also in a neighborhood where you should pack a pistol.
At least in California we still have Fry's, for now.
We had a TRS-80 Model III. It was sort of a POS for a Z80 computer, but it worked. I coded the quadratic equation on it many times, including the check for sqrt(-1)!
I bought my brother floor standing Realistic speakers in high school. They were great. He had them until he was like 30!. The Realistic Mach One speakers remain desirable. Parts Express still sells replacement drivers.
Recently, I grabbed a power MOSFET from there to replace the fried one my car's variable speed fan drive. ~$2.29 vs ~$400 for the OEM part!
So sorry they lost their way. Seems to me they couldn't bridge the gap from component-oriented electronics 70's to the present modular Ardiuno, Rapsberry PI robotics, etc. Their sales force will have a real problem with that transition now. They should not get into a fight with consumer electronics retailers. This is saturated. They should drop one level lower to the educational and DIY crowd and stay there. Perhaps those DIY guys with initiative just buy stuff online.
Cell phones and other means of communication put the amateur radio operator out of business and they no longer needed to buy parts and I believe this help further the impending death of Radio Shack, Inc.. So 88's, from; dit da da, da dit dit dit, dit dit dit da da, da dit da, dit, dit dit da dit. 73's. CQ.
I remember Radio Shack for its Science Fair department, where you could build simple breadboarded circuits and learn how circuits worked. You could even buy their 100-in-1 project set, with instructions on 100 different products with permanentlyl mounted components. The only other company offering comparable products was the Heath Company (Heathkit).
Does no one build their own circuits anymore? Is that the problem--no more use for analog circuits?
This goes against independence of spirit. And it bespeaks a woeful failure in American education. Where are the students who used to flock to Radio Shack to buy the kits to build those projects I mentioned? Nowadays, no one even takes an interest in it.
John Galt wouldn't let Radio Shack die. By his inspiration, the next generation of achievers would also flock to it to buy the latest components. Why, they probably would derive from his lecture series on theoretical physics. I could see him producing a line of parts for anything from transister radios to his trademark electrostatic motor.
A part of life in the Gulch we didn't think about, and now are about to lose.
The brand was TANDY, and they had lots of DIY kits.
I guess that this generation doesn't build things...just consumes things. We are a disposable age, and old farts like me are next!
Sorry to see another landmark brand go.
That's not enough to stay in business, I realize..
They became a cellphone store over ten years ago.
I worked there in college, and they were already getting away from carrying parts in favor of carrying consumer electronics that they put one of their name brands on and sold for high prices. A few years ago they began carrying Arduino, but they caught on to that trend too late.
I went there a year or two ago to see if i could get a small decoupling capacitor, a part that's typically 40 thousandths of an inch long. All they had were huge ceramics the size of a quarter, which were already old school when I first started playing with electronics at age 10.
It's not that I'm mad at them, but I cannot understand these decisions. Who uses huge ceramic throughmount caps from the 70s? Why not sell existing brands that people recognize instead of developing your own brand and damaging it by putting on various products? Their internal training and their ads for the public betray a contempt for their customer. They had running jokes about why anyone would buy their stuff.