[Boatanchors] RS.. was soldering/desoldering

[carolew]

Well, John, I'm not sure I totally agree.

1. Yes, they may not have done well selling only components. However, they sort of stayed half in the component game with a lot of resistors (usually 1/2 watt or smaller) and low-voltage caps. If no one builds stuff
anymore and no one buys parts, why did they continue to stock these items? Conversely, if they saw at least somewhat of a  market in parts, as they apparently did, why not more parts?

2. They cast their lot with cell phones. As Duane noted, that put them in direct competition with the long-ball sluggers.

3. Perhaps they could have carved out a longer-lasting niche if they had stayed more involved with SW receivers, ham equipment, stereos, home entertainment equipment etc. Maybe more of an emphasis on computer stuff would
have helped. Perhaps the market for these items isn't huge but it's a steady, year-round market. Is that market appreciably smaller than the slice of the cell-phone market that they could reasonably have expected to gain
in competition with the heavy hitters?

4. They may also have opened two many stores. I can think of at least four within 20 minutes of me in northwest New Jersey. That's a lot of overhead for rent and sales staff.

5. I'll miss Radio Shack. It was a convenient place to pick up resistors, wire and a myriad of helpful stuff. For example, they were the only place that I know of that carried Deoxit in little felt-tipped pens. These were
absolutely perfect for cleaning bandswitches on communications receivers. As another example, I recently restored an RCA 630TS TV (ca. 1946). I walked into RS and walked out with the balun needed to match coax output from
a VCR or DVD player to an old TV.

5. I think another chain making a similar mistake is Sears. Several years ago, they opened their Sears Hardware stores, which had a very large inventory of tools, hardware and home-repair gadgets. About a year ago, they went into appliances. This forced them to cut drastically their inventory of tools, hardware and
home-repair gadgets and the amount of space allotted to those items. When I go through Sears, I never see anyone even looking at the appliances.

Joe Connor