There was a store similar to that in North Sacramento called California Radio Electronics that literally had everything associated with electronics except consumer electronics. It had been in business since Moses had acne.
In the main part of the store they had inventory that had not been dusted, touched sold, moved, or even repriced since the 1950s. It was a store where you could ask for a single 10 ohm, 1% resistor, and the sales person would spend just as much time with you making sure you had the correct part as he would with a customer buying a $1000 piece of equipment. If you asked for a left-handed Franistan, they'd ask you "What color" and they have several in stock for you to choose from.
In the back and upstairs in the attic, they had government surplus electronics and associated hardware and parts, such as rheostats from 3 inches to a FOOT in diameter, bins of knobs, bins of toggle switches with up to twelve poles, ball-bearing drawer slides that would support up to 2000 pounds per pair, or oil emersion capacitors a foot high and eight inches in diameter, and other esoteric stuff you didn't know you needed until you needed it. You could go back or up, and look around to see what was there and if you found something you needed, come down with and ask what they wanted for it, then start dickering. They might say they wanted $200 for one of those 1 Foot diameter rheostats, but you might walk out with it for $50, but where would you find one if you needed one?
On a Saturday morning, every sales position was literally ringed ten people deep. One had to take a number to be waited on. Some days there was a line out the door.
About ten years ago or so, I drove the sixty mile from Stockton to California Radio Electronics to buy some heavy duty drawer slides.
I KNEW there was trouble when I pulled into the parking lot. There were only TWO cars in the normally packed lot! When I walked in the door, there were only ten clerks and NO customers! CRICKETS! The place was CLEAN! New Lighting. SPARKLING! You could eat off the new linoleum floor.
I walked over to a clerk I had done business with and asked, "Mind if I go into the back? I need some drawer slides."
"No, you can't," he replied. "That area's employees only. Besides, it won't do you any good."
"WHY?" I asked, "What's happened around here" Where is everybody?"
The clerk proceeded to tell me the whole sordid tale of what happened to California Radio Electronics. It seems about three months earlier, a chain operation, having surveyed the area and seeing the phenomenal business that California Radio Electronics was doing, decided they wanted to have a presence in the retail electronics business and offered the owners an amount for the business they couldn't turn down, considering they were nearing retirement age anyway.
The company brought in a young, new manager, He decided that ALL sales of electronic parts would henceforth be made on bubble cards; in other words if a customer wanted to buy ONE resistor, he must now buy TEN identical resistors in a bubble pack. In addition, since only a small minority of customers bought 1% resistors, CRE would no longer stock 1% resistors of any size. 5% resistors would be adequate for the majority of customers. In fact, only resistors in certain sizes would now be stocked. . . those that were most commonly required. Same for capacitors. And no, special orders were not worth doing. All old stock was sold for 5% on the dollar along with all odd sized electronic parts. . . and sold to a discounter.
After I had picked up my lower mandible from the sparkling clean linoleum, I asked, "What about all the government surplus electronics and stuff in the back?"
"They had it all hauled to the dump!"
"OH NO! That's why a lot of your customers came here!" I said. . .
"You and I know that, but they wouldn't listen. To them it was 'junk.' It took two and a half weeks of hauling it out and dumping into dump trucks. It cost them tens of thousands in dump and recycling fees. They weren't even smart enough to take it to a metal recycling place where they could have sold it for scrap!" He said.
"Stupid, in so many ways!" sez I.
"It didn't take long before our customers learned we no longer carried the things they wanted or needed. . . and they just stopped coming. We could not get through to the company what was happening. They kept saying the customers would accommodate to the changes. They said this model works for Radio Shack and it will work for us! We tried to tell them it WASN'T working for Radio Shack!"
I walked out totally depressed. Six months later a "FOR LEASE" sign was in the window of what used to be the best electronics store in Northern California.
And that, my fellow Freepers, is how one kills the goose that lays the golden eggs.