The best part about this thread are all the recommendations for websites to replace RadioShack.
RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
141–150 of 230 posts
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#142Having moved to Australia in recent years, I was very happy to see that JayCar, their equivalent to Radio Shack, seemed to be doing quite well. This is judging by what I've seen of the stores in what is considered a fairly backwards part of Australia (Queensland). The difference seems to be two-fold. First, Jaycar didn't go through an insane expansion (there are only 12 or so locations per state). Second, they've gro…
How much different are retail vs internet prices in AUS?
I just imagine because of AUS (relative) isolation, that internet transactions aren't much cheaper than retail.
Pure speculation.
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#143One of my favorite writers covered his tenure at RadioShack back in the early/mid augts http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy... It's one of the funniest/most heartbreaking articles I have ever read, but also explains a lot about RadioShack's slow spiraling collapse.
This is a wonderful story. A management clusterfudge all the way. I'm confused by him saying that you don't get commissions until hitting a threshold that he "barely" hit once, and then a paragraph later he talks about someone returning phones that got him a $40 commission (so he now loses that commission).
It is actually likely as bad as you'd imagine. Think about how you could rationalize paying minimum wage, but then docking the pay. Give up? Read the comment by `pud in another thread a couple months back:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8665082
The shorter seems to be that they were always on commision, with a default of minimum wage. Should a return occur, the commision would be removed, even if that dropped them below minimum wage.
EDIT: Note further in the thread that a Canadian worker always got minimum wage. So it's possible the sleaze varied by region.
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#144I'm amazed they lasted this long. There's a Radio Shack two doors down from my office. I go in about 5x/year to buy batteries, USB cables or such stuff. Each time there's a new manager. Or a new clerk. Some are polite; some don't bother -- but nobody has a clue. The stores seem totally dependent on weird promotions (buy 16 batteries; get 8 free) or copycat cell-phone deals in an era where there's always a specialized…
A new RadioShack store JUST opened around the corner from me a few weeks ago. I assume it was a short term holiday season thing.
Bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean close everything down. Perhaps that location is perceived as having a chance at profitability.
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#145This bankruptcy has been long anticipated. It's time. There was a time when it was hard for hobbyists to buy parts. Even in Silicon Valley. I used to have a commercial account with Hamilton/Avnet just so I could order and pick up at will-call. The alternative was ordering from Allied Radio, with two week delivery and a 5% error rate. Now, anybody can order from Digi-Key, and get delivery tomorrow if you pay for expre…
> consider a hobbyist front end to Digi-Key and Mouser
Adafruit and SparkFun are that. SparkFun even explicitly mentions the Digikey part for boring stuff like capacitors. (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8375)
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Toronto, Canada where there are a bunch of independent stores that sell hobbyist electronics and seem to make a good profit doing so, so the market isn't dead. I like to buy stuff online but there have been plenty of times where I've been stuck needing a sensor, resistor, or things of that sort, and don't want to wait for 2 weeks for it to ship from China. It's a false premise to say that electronic compone…
I don't disagree, but there is a scale issue Radio Shack has. As a quick example: Population of Toronto, Canada: 2.5 million. From http://wheretobuy.klab.ca/ I see seven stores mentioned for electronic components. Population (not including the large college population which perhaps adds another 33%) of the county where I live: 155,400. Number of Radio Shack stores at present: 3. (There used to be two more.) Even assu…
There was, at their peak, around twenty Radio Shack stores in Toronto. They were one of the few retailers in the 1980s and 1990s that would sell you one of something. Larger distributors were harder to deal with, and were geared towards thousands.
Now there's about a dozen stores that sell components to the hobbyist community and university students that need parts for projects. They have a selection way better than Radio Shack ever did.
It's not how many people live in a town that's the factor: It's how many university students you have. The more universities, the more likely you are to have an electronics savvy population. Perhaps the unusually high concentration where you are is due to that factor.
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#147Nobody seems to have a good answer for what RS should become to avoid shutting down. The most common answer is to go back to its roots and embrace the maker market and stock up on things like 3d printers, breadboards and arduinos. I think this is the wrong idea, since the market is nowhere near large enough to support the vast amounts of stores RS has.
I think if I was the CEO, I would focus on being a boutique shop for neat stuff. Kind of like a brookstone for electronics. They would have google glass, nest, wearables, smart home stuff. They would have things you cant buy at best buy like high end headphones and microphones. Not only that, but it would have knowledgeable staff who could tell me why I should go with the Denon headphones and the Fiio amplifier and skip the sonys. Broadly, alot of the type of stuff you see on kickstarter would feel like their inventory.
Yes, you would have 3d printers and filament in the store also, but the new RS store would not revolve around that- It would be there because it was 'cool'. I would much rather see way less capacitors and fuses and more fuut hammocks and 4th design titanium iphone cases.
But you would also see high end stuff you normally cant buy in best buy because its too expensive to have the inventory floated to all their stores. There is a surprising amount of laptops that are 'too high end' to ever show up in BB and only rarely appear in microsoft stores. That is also the case with audio equipment in spades.
Thats a store I would go to.
I write a bit more about this here : http://harknesslabs.com/post/108193041064/how-to-save-radio-...
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#148A 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 t…
Adafruit is awesome, but it's not remotely a replacement for a brick and mortar store. When I went to RadioShack in the early 90s I would pick the core part of what I wanted and then walk around the store visually matching parts to make sure things fit.
This is somewhat less necessary now that there are more standardized connections between things, but it's still nice and it's something Adafruit can't possibly replicate.
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#149One of my favorite writers covered his tenure at RadioShack back in the early/mid augts http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy... It's one of the funniest/most heartbreaking articles I have ever read, but also explains a lot about RadioShack's slow spiraling collapse.
That's an amazing story. I had no idea how screwed up Radio Shack's management was. I knew they didn't have much business sense, but this is required reading.
Re: RadioShack Prepares Bankruptcy Filing
#150One of my favorite writers covered his tenure at RadioShack back in the early/mid augts http://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy... It's one of the funniest/most heartbreaking articles I have ever read, but also explains a lot about RadioShack's slow spiraling collapse.
This is a wonderful story. A management clusterfudge all the way. I'm confused by him saying that you don't get commissions until hitting a threshold that he "barely" hit once, and then a paragraph later he talks about someone returning phones that got him a $40 commission (so he now loses that commission).
I think that they got a sales commission for everything sold after a threshold, but they always got a commission for mobile phones in particular (likely through the carrier).