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RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

wsj.com

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Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#71

Post by jack-r-abbit »

wozniacki wrote: post #60
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #53

The day before Christmas I found myself at a Radio Shack looking for jumper wires to go with an Arduino/breadboard kit I bought my daughter for Christmas. (A mix up with my wife's Amazon order left us suddenly without jumpers. Desperate times, desperate measures.) What a sad place. I ended up with some crappy jumpers that cost 2x more than the good ones we wanted from Amazon. The component section of RS is a joke. Th…

May I ask why is it that Walmart (for you) belongs in the same bin as Radioshack, in terms of the variety of offerings and availability? Do you prefer Target or some other store for a greater selection or does your household mostly shop at Amazon? I've heard Walmart was making a shift to smaller, approachable and more centrally located stores and was curious to see if this was the reason why.

To put it bluntly... our Walmart is gross and is populated by gross people. There is a lot of truth to the "People of Walmart" meme in our Walmart.

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#72

Post by bunderbunder »

copsarebastards wrote: post #30

A lot of people think RadioShack should have made the transition to internet sales, but I think that they actually started failing earlier, when they expanded into a non-technical market. In the 80s and 90s I could go into a Radio Shack and buy resistors, fuses, soldering equipment, breadboards, various controllers and sensors, hard drives, processors: everything I needed to assemble an electronics project, fix a com…

What's even more tragic is that Radio Shack realized they needed to get makers back, and when they started expressing a desire to do so a lot of makers were initially enthusiastic.

But I don't think they ever really grokked what makers would want out of a local brick-and-mortar. They never did fix the sorry state of their loose component selection. The parts drawers are still stocked with 50% stereo equipment parts they haven't been able to sell since 1992, 20% automotive fuses they haven't been able to sell since 1995, 15% standard capacitor sizes for ancient stereo equipment, and 15% components a modern maker might actually need. They should have written all that stuff down and then taken a look at adafruit.com to see what components a 21st century maker wants to buy.

Yes, they did expand their selection of microcontrollers and kit projects, but that's all stuff we've long since gotten used to ordering online. It won't drive feet through the door. They needed to be backing that up with the kinds of stuff a DIYer might want to buy on short notice. A 2015 DIYer, not a 1985 one.

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#73

Post by dragonwriter »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #62
specialp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adafruit, Sparkfun, et al are also working out of cheap locations, Not malls and other high rent retail locations. I ordered from Adafruit once and it shipped from an apartment in Brooklyn. Radio Shack is a retail store with many locations. There are not many people that have an immediate need for Rasberry pi components, they order online. So that model is dead. Radio Shack despite this does indeed still devote a sma…

>There are not many people that have an immediate need for... There are not many people that have an immediate need for any one particular item in a dry goods store on any particular day. The same is true for other stores and was always true for nearly every item RS carried. I think the arguments ITT boil down to: did the internet kill RS, or did RS finally succumb to its own poor management.

> There are not many people that have an immediate need for any one particular item in a dry goods store on any particular day.

Small floor-plan dry goods stores aren't exactly a booming business, either.

> I think the arguments ITT boil down to: did the internet kill RS, or did RS finally succumb to its own poor management.

And the answer is "yes".

(In longer form, the internet was a key factor in a shift in the retail market for the classes of goods RS sells whose nature RS's management was slow to recognize, and reacted to poorly.)

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#74

Post by cypher543 »

copsarebastards wrote: post #30

A lot of people think RadioShack should have made the transition to internet sales, but I think that they actually started failing earlier, when they expanded into a non-technical market. In the 80s and 90s I could go into a Radio Shack and buy resistors, fuses, soldering equipment, breadboards, various controllers and sensors, hard drives, processors: everything I needed to assemble an electronics project, fix a com…

The last time I went to a RadioShack, I was looking for a resistor. I checked their website, which said my local store had it in stock. When I got there, I found the electronic components stuffed in a dark corner and the smaller components were all mixed up in the wrong drawers. After a few minutes of searching, I didn't find the resistor I needed, so I asked the only employee in the store where it might be. She told me that if it wasn't in the drawer, they don't have it. I said "But your website says it's in stock," to which she replied "Oh we never update that."

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#75

Post by danielweber »

mistermumble wrote: post #59
funkdobiest wrote: post #40

Last time I was in RadioShack was in the 90's in Washington DC, and I went there for a connector, and there were literally 20 people in line all buying minutes for cell phones, with only one person in the store. I thought this was some sort of hidden camera reality/joke tv show. I just put the item down and left.

I remember going to RS stores to buy a 99 cent part and the clerk having to write, in long hand, on a triplicate form, my name and address and the item, before entering the amount on a cash register. I refused to give my info, and he said he could not sell me the part without it, so I said: "OK, my name is John Doe at 123 Main Street". He looked at me quizically and then wrote it down on the form without a word. For…

Radio Shack was infamous for collecting customer information. "No, we can't sell you without this information."

RS will be beloved by business-school types for how many different big mistakes it made.

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#76

Post by glesica »

wozniacki wrote: post #60
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #53

The day before Christmas I found myself at a Radio Shack looking for jumper wires to go with an Arduino/breadboard kit I bought my daughter for Christmas. (A mix up with my wife's Amazon order left us suddenly without jumpers. Desperate times, desperate measures.) What a sad place. I ended up with some crappy jumpers that cost 2x more than the good ones we wanted from Amazon. The component section of RS is a joke. Th…

May I ask why is it that Walmart (for you) belongs in the same bin as Radioshack, in terms of the variety of offerings and availability? Do you prefer Target or some other store for a greater selection or does your household mostly shop at Amazon? I've heard Walmart was making a shift to smaller, approachable and more centrally located stores and was curious to see if this was the reason why.

Walmart makes me feel depressed. Piles of awful, consumeristic shit everywhere. This, plus the fact that it is owned and run by truly terrible (in my opinion) people mean I go there only as an absolute last resort. I try to buy most things at non-chain or smaller chain stores (especially those that are known to treat their employees better) when I can.

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#77

Post by TwiztidK »

wozniacki wrote: post #60
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #53

The day before Christmas I found myself at a Radio Shack looking for jumper wires to go with an Arduino/breadboard kit I bought my daughter for Christmas. (A mix up with my wife's Amazon order left us suddenly without jumpers. Desperate times, desperate measures.) What a sad place. I ended up with some crappy jumpers that cost 2x more than the good ones we wanted from Amazon. The component section of RS is a joke. Th…

May I ask why is it that Walmart (for you) belongs in the same bin as Radioshack, in terms of the variety of offerings and availability? Do you prefer Target or some other store for a greater selection or does your household mostly shop at Amazon? I've heard Walmart was making a shift to smaller, approachable and more centrally located stores and was curious to see if this was the reason why.

I always disliked Walmart's selection. The prices are decent, better than I'll pay at most smaller stores, but they basically carry the same products at every location with no regional variation.

For example, in my college town there were two grocery stores: Walmart and Econofoods. Walmart carried it's typical products and was pretty boring. On the other hand, Econofoods had an impressive selection (more so because this was a small, 8,000 person town) of locally made products, alcohol, and ethnic food. It completely blew Walmart out of the water.

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#78

Post by Retra »

jordigh wrote: post #29
dewitt wrote: post #15

Apologies about the link to a restricted site. I didn't notice it since I landed on the article via a search. Out of curiosity, since several comments here complained about the paywall ("paywalls are nsfl"), and an equal number or more on HN run adblockers and/or openly dislike ads in general (the whole "you are the product" meme), how do you think news sites should monetize? Seems like newspapers still add value in…

> Out of curiosity, since several comments here complained about the paywall ("paywalls are nsfl"), and an equal number or more on HN run adblockers and/or openly dislike ads in general (the whole "you are the product" meme), how do you think newspapers should monetize? I adblock aggressively, and I don't think it's my capitalist duty to watch ads for products in order to create wants for products I don't need.[1] I'…

I find it disheartening that the common talk of ads is so distanced from the original social justification for ads: to educate and inform consumers. Primarily, to help ensure that the economy engages in the proper degree of competition.

Unfortunately, ads are so full of misinformation and propaganda that there is no hope to be informed by them, so they do not help with the original goal: the very thing that makes them acceptable practice. An advertisement should inform and educate -- something that increasingly requires communication _without bias_ (how radical!)

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#79

Post by hsod »

angersock wrote: post #54
debacle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who use adblock are just entitled. They are manipulating the tragedy of the commons and then absolving themselves of any responsibility. They'll defend their right to use adblock militantly and then go pirate a game using the same defense. It's a personal moral defense rather than a logical justification.

Or, you know, we just don't want to have to deal with bad ads cluttering up our content, or ads that spy on and track us, or ads that start playing sound for no apparent reason, or ads that break our browsers. Yeah, no, on second thought--it's probably that we're actually pirates. That's a much more obvious answer.

This isn't a rebuttal against the tragedy of the commons argument. Commercial fisherman "just don't want to have to deal with" catching less fish, but overfishing is still a problem.

Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing

#80

Post by [deleted] »

debacle wrote: post #45
dewitt wrote: post #15

Apologies about the link to a restricted site. I didn't notice it since I landed on the article via a search. Out of curiosity, since several comments here complained about the paywall ("paywalls are nsfl"), and an equal number or more on HN run adblockers and/or openly dislike ads in general (the whole "you are the product" meme), how do you think news sites should monetize? Seems like newspapers still add value in…

People who use adblock are just entitled. They are manipulating the tragedy of the commons and then absolving themselves of any responsibility. They'll defend their right to use adblock militantly and then go pirate a game using the same defense. It's a personal moral defense rather than a logical justification.

[deleted]
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