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A Eulogy for RadioShack

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Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

jmspring wrote: post #11

Radio Shack at this point is a sad caricature of itself. I remember being able to buy all sorts of ICs, analog parts, interesting radios and kits. Now it peddles cell phones and overly prices things -- I recall needing a battery for my cordless phone recently, they wanted $23 for a battery for a $50 phone? Uh, no. Two other bay area places that have changed a lot are Frys and the now closed Quement Electronics. Fry's…

> Now it peddles cell phones and overly prices things -- I recall needing a battery for my cordless phone recently, they wanted $23 for a battery for a $50 phone?

Radio Shack always did that -- especially on batteries. High margins on things like batteries is what provided the cash flow that paid for the floor space devoted to more unique things that sold less but brought in customers who bought the batteries.

The problem Radio Shack has now is that with the internet and big-box electronics stores, RS's dinky stores aren't particularly great places for hobbyists (and wouldn't be even if they devoted more of their floor space to them), and they don't have a competitive selection of mass market goods either, so the basic format doesn't work.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#52

Post by chaffneue »

pud wrote: post #49

I worked at Radio Shack. I was in high school and lived with my folks. I had almost no expenses. It didn't occur to me until much later what a bummer it all was. - You get paid commission, something like 1% per sale. Commission was pointless because almost everyone already knew what they needed (AA batteries or a headphone adapter...). - If your commission didn't add up to minimum wage, you got minimum wage. Since it…

I grew up loving my visits to Radio Shack for hobby electronics when I was a kid. It seemed like a place that would be a straight up dream job. Eventually, I worked at a Radio Shack up in Canada to pay for University and I felt the pain of this stupid competition with your coworkers to make $1 more in pay day to day only to have someone return some high commission item days later and put you on the shit list again. If the commission went into negative territory where I live, they still had to pay minimum wage. Commissions were just a bonus and usually only available during Christmas when the malls are busy. I usually went for the "spiffs," which were some kind of payout based on selling special/discontinued goods and often paid better than having to stretch to a 2000-3000 revenue day. Ahh retail. Don't miss it.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#53

Post by blhack »

Radioshack, want to save you business? Turn every single one of your stores into a hackerspace.

You don't even need much. Get a laser cutter, a 3D printer, a drill press, free WiFi, some tables, and a stack of arduinos and you'll be doing awesome.

Then build an instructables-esque community website for people to show off their projects.

I'll even consult with you guys on this if you make a big enough donation to the hackerspace I help run in Phoenix.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#54

Post by morganvachon »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #40
morganvachon wrote: post #25

I'd be willing to bet that this is exactly the way it was at most, if not all, corporate RadioShack stores. On the other hand, the franchise stores (which mostly no longer exist) could be great places to shop and to work, because they were owned by actual breathing human beings, not faceless corporate overlords. My first "real" job after high school was at the local RadioShack, which was owned by one of the most amaz…

> It really saddens me to know that he'll likely have to drop the RadioShack name one day soon Could he turn his shop into a for-profit hackerspace that has inventory for projects?

It's such a small town that I doubt that would work. That said, he's the only place in town to get things like scanner radios, small electronic parts, certain tools, and a wide selection of batteries. He'll probably just revert back to the original company name before he became a franchisee, and source his small parts from Digi-key or Mouser.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#55

Post by kenrikm »

hagope wrote: post #46

I actually think RadioShack can turn things around. "Hacking" electronics is gaining ground esp with Arduino, Rpi, etc. Here's what I would do: - Beef up stock of "maker" electronics, Arduino's, Rpi, modules, kits etc. - Buy/build modules/kits, work with suppliers like SparkFun, Shmart, Adafruit for help in this area - Create "recipes" for building electronics and guide customers through purchasing the materials - Cl…

If you've been to Radio Shack recently, they have a decent number of Arduino kits and the like.. however I don't think people are not dense enough to pay $60 for a kit you can purchase for $20 on Amazon. I think their was a point where they could have course corrected though I think they missed the exit half a decade ago.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#56

Post by coupdejarnac »

pud wrote: post #49

I worked at Radio Shack. I was in high school and lived with my folks. I had almost no expenses. It didn't occur to me until much later what a bummer it all was. - You get paid commission, something like 1% per sale. Commission was pointless because almost everyone already knew what they needed (AA batteries or a headphone adapter...). - If your commission didn't add up to minimum wage, you got minimum wage. Since it…

All true. I graduated with a EE degree during the dotcom bust, so I worked at RS for a few months.

We were told stories of a sales associate that managed to make about $80k a year. He managed this by getting customers a RS credit card and loading up the customers' shopping cart full of stuff. He did this by telling the customers that their monthly/weekly credit card payments would be $X, which might seem like a reasonable amount to the unwise. The funny thing is, that guy's store wasn't even profitable (well, from what I heard).

Anyways, by the time I worked there, RS had transitioned to being a cell phone retailer more than anything else. I think I've been in a store maybe twice in the last 11 years.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#57

Post by personZ »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #17

While it's glib to say that Radio Shack was lost for the want of a space, the change in their corporate identity from "Radio Shack" to "RadioShack" -- 1995 -- coincides with their slide to irrelevance nicely enough to seem kind of symbolic. We don't really know what the Internet is, but we've noticed that cool companies are using CamelCase. I suspect it's hard for people who are under 30, maybe even 40, to believe ho…

Quite a few comments about how Radio Shack lost their way and squandered their opportunity, but really their business model was dead. Nothing they could have done would have changed what happened.

It was a store with a very large number of SKUs that they could only sustain through very high profit margins. Sure that works great when it's Sunday and you need that resistor now, but the vast majority of times people would just order online.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#58

Post by RevRal »

Ah RadioShack, where I acquired Jazz Jackrabbit and a circuit board toy with my dad. It's sad that RadioShack isn't as fun as I remember it being, but last time I was in I saw a similar circuit board toy which is nice. It's always sad to hear that a company treats their employees as though they are no more than cattle tugging a plow.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#59

Post by kenrikm »

jmspring wrote: post #11

Radio Shack at this point is a sad caricature of itself. I remember being able to buy all sorts of ICs, analog parts, interesting radios and kits. Now it peddles cell phones and overly prices things -- I recall needing a battery for my cordless phone recently, they wanted $23 for a battery for a $50 phone? Uh, no. Two other bay area places that have changed a lot are Frys and the now closed Quement Electronics. Fry's…

I go to the Fry's Palo Alto store, it has a decent selection of parts/components if you stay to the right half of the store. (Left hand side is all TVs and Sales guys yuck..) If you want a larger selection of electronic components in the Bay Area - HSC is hard to beat and they have a ton of weird stuff too.

Re: A Eulogy for RadioShack

#60

Post by brianberns »

I learned to program in the early 1980s by playing with a TRS-80 floor model for an hour or two at a time while my mom shopped elsewhere in the mall. My first program animated a sine wave in BASIC by printing a single character one line at a time, and letting the lines scroll up the screen. I would've loved to own one of those computers, but my dad refused to buy one because he said it would be too tempting for me. He didn't even want me to have a hand calculator, and gave me his old slide rules instead (which were fun - not complaining!). I didn't have unfettered access to computers until I went to college a few years later.

I never made a big purchase at RS, but I always appreciated that I could pop in for electronic sundries as needed over the years. My opinion of them started to go south about a decade ago when they began insisting that they needed to know my zipcode every time I bought something. That was very fishy and heralded their sad decline, I think.

RS has been obsolete for years and I really don't know how they've managed to stay in business this long, but I'll miss the name when it's gone.

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