[Scan-DC] UPDATE: Did RadioShack run out of things to sell?

[Joel Kahn]

Doug:
I remember spending many a Saturday trying to decide what I wanted to buy and build in the Lafayette Radio store in Queenstown.  I also did an after-school/weekend stint at the local Radio Shack store.  The wall behind the register was filled with resistors, capacitors, and eventually ICs, and we were expected to answer customer questions about which value Ohm to buy for what.

Now their clerks can barely tell you about which of the cell/smart phones to buy, but they do know which wireless plan and company pays them the  best sales incentives!

 
Joel R Kahn


________________________________
 From: Doug Kitchener via Scan-DC <scan-dc at mailman.qth.net>
To: "Scan-DC at mailman.qth.net" <Scan-DC at mailman.qth.net> 
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 7:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Scan-DC] UPDATE: Did RadioShack run out of things to sell?
 

A larger thing not mentioned, which those of you who are "baby boomers" like me will know, is that there used to be something called "the electronics hobby", which is now dead, or at best on life support... like follows like, I guess, but most of the guys that I grew up with were techie types of one sort or another, and we fooled around with things mechanical (bicycles, and later, cars) and things electronic... telephones, TVs, radios (broadcast receivers!) and stuff like that... this is when you could take the tubes (!) out of a radio or TV and take 'em down to Peoples' Drug Store and plug 'em into the U-Test-Um machine... and buy a replacement for the bad one there!  (There were also places called TV repair shops...)

Those of us who got into the higher levels of these pastimes got into things like ham radio, CB, maybe even got a radiotelephone license of one class or another, or listening to fire or police communications (not "scanning", because there were no radios that scanned at that time!)  We also built Heathkits and Eico kits, electronic test equipment, radio & communications equipment, TVs, stereos, etc.

A lot of those guys went into fields like electrical engineering or electronics manufacturing, which was rich around here... during the Cold War there were all kinds of outfits, large and small, here in the DC area, that were involved in building electronics for the military... boiled down, most of these were "radios" of one kind or another, or sensing devices / systems.. the "radios" might not necessarily have been transmitting and receiving voices, but simplistically, that's what they were.

Point is, Radio Shack, along with Lafayette, Allied, and another one whose name I forget at the moment, supported that hobby, and it's now pretty much gone, or at least much smaller than it used to be.  Years ago I worked with a guy at Melpar in Falls Church... he had worked in a big hobby shop in Waldorf, and his theory about the decline of hobbies in general was that the early video games (e.g. Pacman) were a form of "instant gratification", drop in a quarter and occupy yourself for 20 or 30 minutes or whatever, instead of building a model kit or an electronics project.  There's still some of that out there, mostly in amateur radio, but not like it used to be...

Well, thanks for letting me ramble and reminisce...

DK





>________________________________
> From: Blair Thompson <b_thom at juno.com>
>To: Scan-DC at mailman.qth.net 
>Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 10:41 AM
>Subject: [Scan-DC] UPDATE: Did RadioShack run out of things to sell?
> 
>
>http://news.morningstar.com/all/ViewNews.aspx?article=/MW/TDJNMW20140610134_univ.xml
>
>....
>RadioShack's stores face the same problem that Borders, Blockbuster and Circuit City did, Pachter says; the remaining company-owned stores and franchises will never be able to stock as much as Amazon (AMZN), nor will it become a destination store like Apple (AAPL). "RadioShack used to be a convenience store, but it's evolved into a desperation/necessity store," Pachter says. "If you need a battery for your watch and you can't stand to wait two days for Amazon Prime's free two-day delivery, you might buy one in RadioShack." 
>....
>
>Indeed, even traditional RadioShack accessories struggle to compete. Pachter cites a classic RadioShack purchase: The CR2032 lithium battery used for key fobs, calculators, remote
controls, doorbells and watches. A pack of three CR2032 batteries by RadioShack's Enercell brand costs $12.99 . A pack of 10 on Amazon costs $5.45 and a pack of 50 costs just $7.33 from Lily's Home via Amazon. "RadioShack is not price competitive for the things that you used to go in there for," Pachter says, "and consumers have been trained by Walmart and Costco to shop in bulk."
>
>And then there's that other problem: the name. "RadioShack.com" is an anachronism for the Internet age. "Grandkids these days don't even know what a radio is," Pachter says. "It's like calling the store Shortwave Shack or Mainframe Computer Shack." In an effort to overcome its association with an outmoded technology, RadioShack briefly changed its name to "The Shack" in 2009. In his statement, Magnacca said, "Our brand equity remains strong, reflected in the sales growth we're seeing in our new concept stores." 
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