Well, RS can go the way of Lafayette Radio.
Posted on 12/04/2014 6:59:29 PM PST by SamAdams76
Several generations of home electronics hobbyists, ham radio enthusiasts and computer nerds spent their growth-spurt years haunting their local RadioShack stores. They can't be happy about the company's long slide toward irrelevance and its looming disappearance as a feature of the retail landscape.
The chain joined the quixotic rush by American retailers to open on Thanksgiving Day, but was one of the very few outside the grocery business to be open as early as 8 a.m. A surer sign of management desperation is hard to conceive--or of management cluelessness, for that matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I quit going to Radio Shack because their prices were much too high. Even their surplus outlet prices were ridiculous. Selling junk at near new prices. And the final straw was when the clerk couldn’t identify or find an SO-239 coax connector in the store or catalog. I looked around and found one in the store in drawer full of junk loose connectors. They wanted a princely sum for it which I did not pay. So I thanked him and found a supply on the internet for 1/4 the price. I estimate that connector I found had be sitting there unsold for at least 20 years. In my opinion, the pricing and inventory issues are what finally torpedoed them. After Ed Juge retired, bad management seemed to plague them.
RIP Radio Shack, I knew you well...at least for 50 years. Sadly I will not miss you.
Nobody in America builds anything anymore.
MOST retail stores will be gone in less than 10 years. The on-line shopping experience has replaced stores and malls that used to be full of stores. Even Wal Mart, Home Depot and others have fast growing on-line business that will replace the brick and mortar edifices, or at least downscale them.
Places like my motorcycle repair shop will remain, but like me, they will not have retail stores attached to them. It cost too much to put up a representation of popular products that people can buy on-line. I have to practically arm wrestle some of my customers to keep them from buying their tires on-line and wanting me to mount and balance them.
That’s the trend, and you either adapt or perish.
On-line shopping and delivery are where the money will be.
Well, RS can go the way of Lafayette Radio.
I saw Hoyt Atkins on TV telling someone how he wrote the lyrics to “Joy To The World”. He said he had written a piece of music that he was trying to sell to somebody and the man told him that he could not judge the music without some lyrics to go with it, he told Hoyt to just make up some nonsense he could sing with it so he sat down and the first thing he thought of was “Jeremiah was a bullfrog, he was a good friend of mine” and the rest just naturally followed within five minutes or so. He sang it for the guy and he said something like, “That’s a hit song, don’t change anything” and the rest is history.
They could have remade themself to focus on the “maker” community - sort of a brick and mortar version of sparkfun.com or the adafruit. With rent by the hour 3d printing and a laser cutter, and a decent parts selection.
But their management is too unimaginative for that.
I watched an interview where Phil Collins said that the word means nothing, it was just a vocalization he liked the sound of, and so he used it in the song.
My memory may be wrong, but there it is.
As soon as someone tells me what "Abacab" means.
Many order from Digi-Key Electronics for DIY projects and direct others to do so.
Abacab is basically just the chord progression of the title song from Genesis' 1981 album.
Bought a tape recoder from RS many eons ago- I really liked it coz it would pick up all the local radio stations when I turned it on. But when I recorded something all the radio stations were recorded too. Musta been the world`s first multi-tasking tape recorder.
In our youth, we used to love their famous kits.
Best toy I ever had. And I thought at the time electronics were cool.
Its sad that its the end of an era. When I was kid, every boy used to look forward to the latest kit from Radio Shack.
No more.
I read where Heathkit is trying to come back from the grave.
Yeah I knew that.
Looks like the plan you initiated back in 1989 to destroy Radio Shack has worked splendidly!
I saw an interview with Gregg Allman a while back, and he told a similar story about the song "Melissa." He said he had written the lyrics and the music but didn't have a name for the song for a long time because he couldn't think of a girl's name that sounded just right in the refrain line. The song was actually called "Delilah" for a while. But Allman said he was in a grocery store and he overheard a woman with a Spanish accent scolding her young granddaughter ("Stop that, Melissa!") for running around and pulling things off the shelves. He had a brilliant idea right there on the spot that the name "Melissa" would fit perfectly in the song, and the rest is history.
Agreed. Our large KMart on busy U.S. 19 (Pasco County, Florida) is shuttering its doors and windows next week.
Leni
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