They can’t stock everything. However, they used to be good at stocking stuff that everyone needs from time to time. If they just had a big selection of switches, relays, connectors, resistors, capacitors, wire, enclosures, and prototyping tools I think they’d be back. Literature and kits would help too.

It would be nice to be able to get parts locally, i think i’ll stop by there and ask them about this, see what their take is. the manager and i went to high school together, see if i can get any details on what’s in place for this.

I’m surprised and pleased that they are even pretending to care about DIYers. I want to encourage this behavior.

I think they could (re)make their niche in beginners’ electronics education. Some of the best starter’s books I have were written by Forest Mims III and published by Radio Shack in the early 80′s. Publish cool project plans and stock the parts to make them and they’ll make friends with a new crop of young hobbyists.

At that point they’re adding value that is hard to find on the internet. Sure you can get parts cheaper on digikey but it will cost you $8 shipping and which one of their 10,000 switches do you actually want?

my $.02

Sell more “development kits” and boards. Stock PIC, AVR, Propeller, Arduino, etc.

Establish relationships with Adafruit, Sparkfun, Maker Shed, Seeed Studios, Parallax etc. Support these kits with DIY books that can get people started on these projects! (Example would be the 555 chip and the Forrest Mims Books that radioshack used to be famous for. They still sell Mim’s books, but they are harder and harder to find.)
You could trial a few select products from the above vendors in your “DIY” section of the store.

Don’t charge too much of a mark-up, or no one will buy them! See it as an opportunity to restore the radioshack name… Right now I think of radioshack as “BatteryShack” or “PhoneShack”.

another $.02 – Sparkfun had a awesome PCB vending machine at the San Francisco Bay Area Maker Faire this past weekend. It was stocked with common Sparkfun products like Arduino, Xbee, Lithium ion batteries, small kits and breakout boards. Granted it was a cash-only machine, it would get people into the radioshack store. Support the vending machine with knowledgeable staff and resources (books or even an online presence) and it would be gold.

All of these ideas have to do with building a community. Not just attracting electronic component consumers, but creating them as well:

1) workshops.

Have free/cheap classes teaching my kids to solder and we’re probably going to by a few components for them on the way out.

2) Hardware mods for the non-technical public.

Offer small fees to upgrade cheap capacitors in Samsung LCD TVs, or to add usb ports to routers.

3) Maker contests

Be the kind of place where people go to show off what they’re building, or to get ideas.

4) Facilitate electronic clubs

Volunteer a back room and a few breadboards for people to meet one evening a month to work on stuff.

Help the community learn to appreciate the art of electronics. Do that and you’ll get people to eventually buy electronic parts.

As a former RadioShack employee who was “asked to quit” because of my refusal to sell cell phones, I say to hell with you. I would never step foot in a Shack again, and I advise my friends to steer clear of your stores on a regular basis.

Obviously RadioShack exists to shove overpriced and under-performing technology on to ignorants consumers. They hire ex-Sprint and ex-Verison kiosk drones over tech-savvy people for a reason: they want everyone that walks in the door to buy a cell phone contract.

Use an online retailer or support your local small business. Don’t shop at The Shack.

I call BS as well. “What are the three things…” THREE!?? Are you kidding me?? Three things??? HAHAHAHA!!

Just look at the video! It’s a metaphor of their current attitude.. first you see her looking directly at you, then, you get a close up of her from the side, as if she’s talking to someone else. Feel alienated? HELL YES!

This is a very poor attempt at addressing the total lack of real electronic parts and supplies for the DIY community. It used to be the whole store, now it’s down to a few cabinets with drawers that are usually poorly stocked.

I wonder just how many real projects she has built??

This will be interesting to follow up on…

I’m sure the product they bring in will be some kind of Icrap.

I think kits and literature is a good place to start. Also a knowledgeable sales person would help.

@j_jwalrus
Exactly what I was going to say!

and @Mark
It’s iCrap! The punctuation matters. ;)

I think it’s a marketing scheme as well, but they’re asking, so I may as well say something.

1. More knowledgeable salespeople. I’ve gone in there, asking for this or that, and in the 5+ RadioShacks I’ve been to, only one guy actually knew where what I wanted (LEDs, caps, ect.) was. And he wasn’t even wearing RadioShack branded clothing. Of course, he was the only person I’ve ever seen in RadioShack that actually was using a soldering iron when I walked in!

2. More starter kits. Starter kits can really get people interested in things fast, if done right. A Arduino starter kit would really sell well, if done right, because of the wealth of information online. They could buy the Arduinos from a distributer, and sell them at a decent price (say $70 US) along with the basics needed to get started like two motors, a driver shield, a servo, distance sensor and a couple odds and ends. Just enough to build something like the “Start Here Robot” on LMR.

3. Just a better assortment of pieces, period. Oh, and decent prices on them too. I’m not gonna pay three dollars for an LED, it’d be cheaper to get one from Digikey and pay $2.50 US shipping (which is an option).

Is it just me, or is there no place to actually voice my opinion on the “3 things” ? No poll or anything on the blog. Are we supposed to just comment on their Facebook?

PCB vending machine… now that would be an idea to explore. Completely automated, holds 5-6 different stock board sizes, takes gerber files as an input and spits out a finished, plated, silkscreened PCB some time later. Since the waiting time would be somewhat long-ish I could see a magnetic card / barcode + PIN authentification system for the customer to pick up his board a few hours later / the next day.

I dislike Radio Shack, their prices are too high. I can buy many, many resistors and a storage bin for them and still save money and have resistor values that I’ll never use. I’m usually up late tinkering and RS is already closed by then, and if I order from Mouser by 8 PM, I’ll have it the next day, and it’s much cheaper….I’ve given up on RS.

I agree that it would be great to have a decent selection of parts at the local Radio Shack, like they used to have. However, I don’t think the market can sustain this.

Most consumers are just that. They consume and don’t know how anything works, or care to fix it. Throw it out and buy another one is the attitude.

As for my three local Radio Shack stores, something has happened in recent months, but I don’t know why. At least two of the managers who have been there for many years are suddenly gone. It makes me think that Corporate forced them out for some reason. Now, one of those managers was a real jerk, but the other was knowledgeable and helpful.

Radio Shack was an institution and a favorite place to go when I was growing up. Now I seldom go there, because they have almost nothing I want. I frankly don’t hold out much hope that they will survive another ten years.

Nothing short of an extremely wide and well stocked selection of electronic parts would ever make me want to step foot inside a Radio Shack ever again.

Poor quality electronics selling for more than the better ones at other retailers..That’s been their MO for 2 decades now.

My 0.02: Get with these popular bloggers and vendors and use their marketing before you tank..

Also is it me or do they only hires burnouts and child support daddies there? I couldn’t get a job there as a teen but a bunch of morons on the interstate to nowhere can..

Project enclosures that actually fit the dimensions of the protoboards they sell…

RS used to carry (maybe they still do?) project lab boards that had an assortment of resistors, transistors, etc. that had little springs for connectors and a book with projects that someone who wanted to learn about electronics could purchase. Maybe they could collaborate with Sparkfun, Adafruit, etc. to come up with some newer project “kits” or “labs” with Arduino, Parallax, etc. that have instructions that could help people with an interest in electronics get started?

In addition to some of the above comments, more pieces parts, the vending machine,

Get rid of the phones. We’ll go to a…wait for it…phone store. I don’t know a single person who would go to Radio Shack for a TV or phone, period.

Get rid of the low quality toys. Any toys you sell should be 100% hacker friendly or build-from-kit.

Get rid of the useless employees, as previous posters have said.

I’d be happy to buy at Radio Shack if they stocked anything I needed and did so at a reasonable price.

Brick-and-mortar parts sellers are awesome for the prototyping phase because time is costly and I am guessing from day to day what parts I’ll need. A local source is very helpful.

There are a few stores around that “get it” while Radio Shack has not for quite some time.

Reading some of these comments is hilarious. Stop selling cell phones and consumer electronics? Only hire people with electronics/DIY knowledge? Are you serious?

Like already said above, the VAST majority of people are simple consumers. They have zero technical knowledge and have no interest in even replacement parts, let alone actually building something from scratch.

Thinking that refocusing Radio Shack on an extreme minority of the customer base is somehow going to make them more relevant than playing to the majority of American consumers is ludicrous.

As much as we would like it, there simply isn’t enough demand for a large chain of electronic component/equipment retailers in the 21st century.

As a current store manager, I whole heartedly concur with you guys spreading this like wildfire.

We now have an accountant CEO instead of the solid stream of Marketing CEO’s, and dollars make sense to this man, Jim Gooch.

We were told to reset our stores in anticipation to this influx, so it is the real deal.

But please be kind… Help the stores that are there to help you. It is all well and good to add 3000 SKU’s to the stores, but you need to buy locally. Also drop a line about outdoor signage… From cellular to HaD emblems, I would love some kind of outside presence…

Be specific as possible. Exact components, manufacturers, parts, small assemblies, everything. If you will shop at RS instead of mail order, you can have it all for a very long time.

If anyone is near Turkey Creek in Knoxville, stop by and say HI!

The last time I went to the local RS the asked if I needed help, I said I was looking for a PIR module; they responded, “is that a new IPhone add-on or something?” Then proceeded to ask me 7 times to buy batteries. Literally 7 times. I cursed the idiot, who by the way kept glancing at the TV that had some basketball game playing. I will never ever go back to a RS again. The manager didn’t even know what a transistor was…..

As for what I would like to see sold there, I would like to see them sell ice cream. At least they might know what ice cream is, and would be the only reason I ever step foot in the shit hole they run.

@mike
I had one of those as a kid. I loved that thing, when adjusting a few wires makes an FM transmitter and such.
I doubt they can actually compete with on-line stores when theres not enough of a market for the amount of stores they have. Maybe if only a choice few stores became a mega shack that carried a large supply of parts, kits, books, and a well trained staff then they could eventually beef up the mall stores.
3 products? Make that number 10 and also categories. Do they seriously think that 3 products would even come close to a change. Look, the shack is a joke to anyone thats an electronic hobbyist. Its now like stopping by the grocery store for the hardware/automotive section

Yeah right, do us all a favor and just go out of business … please! I stopped going there at least 15 years ago. I won’t go back for any reason.

They’re gonna have to pick their market, and stick with it. Do they want the cheap consumer goods area? Or the hobbyist area? Or the HAM radio area? I doubt you can have it all.

I still drop by from time to time, just to see what they may have that might be of any interest. I hardly ever find anything.

I’d go with the hobby stuff, a wide selection of goods like wire, enclosures, hardware etc… Stuff that can be applies to most hobby stuff.

But really, why buy there? Are they planning on beating out Digi-Key or Mouser?

I don’t know how many people know, but RS used to have a really nice on-line supply of stuff. Some very cool stuff. Tons of parts and kits and tools and stuff. But I’m guessing, most people didn’t even know it. By then, they had stopped going there.

I stopped going there after I lost a small fortune (to me at the time) in those sound generator chips. They had the wrong part in there and it had a different power supply connection. I must have gone through half a dozen of those chips before I finally got wise, all along, thinking it was my fault they were smoking.

I wish ‘em luck though.

In the UK they were known as Tandy before changing to RadioShack (Definitely not to be confused with Radio Spares). The shops have all but gone and the official online shop has only has a few audio connectors. They had competition from Maplin Electronics in the UK who still have many shops and an online store with a reasonable component selection though it is a bit light on the microcontoller side. If the is no competition in the US for an hobbyist electronics outlet maybe they can survive.

i kinda like our local radio shack. its a very small town, population ~3k. so they are the only place you can go and get some parts. they also have better manors than some of the more urban radio shacks i’ve visited. most of the time they just leave me to brows the racks. they also throw valuble parts into the bargain bin. 50 cent 5v regulators are always turning up (i buy em as i find em). even when im getting jacked im still saving money, since the cost of shiping to ak is fucking insane. been unable to order from mouser or digikey, they dont like to tell me how much shipping costs. sparkfun has ok shipping, but not the place to go when you need a resistor or capacitor of a certain value. sometimes il order parts from china off of ebay, but usually shipping takes 3 weeks.

as for what i want rs to stock, mcus, programmers, board etching supplies (ferric chloride, pcb material, etch resist pens, iron on circuit patterns and stencils, scopes and other test equipment, soldering irons that dont suck, kits, larger ic selections, smd parts, etc, etc.

Thinking about it some, I wouldn’t go parts so much, except the most used “common” stuff like LED’s etc…. But they did used to carry some tools that I could use.

I don’t expect them to carry EREM or Lindstrom, but a nice butane torch, with “heat gun” attachment, maybe some off the wall but handy stuff. Nice enclosures with proto-board that fits, that sort of thing. The good part about that is they don’t have to stock a lot because they won’t sell a lot, but it’ll be there, and can be used a “get them in the store item” for other stuff, like the Arduino’s etc… dev Kits etc…

But dump the phones, the cheap junk. But keep some of the cheap toys, I do buy some of those for parts!

The phones pay for your stuff guys!

Phones have no margin anywhere, but the accessories are what fun the RS ability to be there for you. IF it wasn’t for cellular revenue, I’m not sure that they would be able to offer as much as they do now.

Also, did you know that RS’s new recurring Service Plan is the only “insurance” in the industry that covers rooted phones?

Maybe The Shack has some amazing options for those that are willing to give them a shot.

I invite anyone to my store. Don’t tell me, just shop it for something, and report back here. It is amazing what happens when you have a staff that truly cares about what their customers needs are.

The ones in Canada are even worse. Called “the source” now. They carry nothing. I went to Port Huron, Michigan on a day trip. There was a Radio Shack there that I checked out. They had an entire drawer of parts, vs the single isle that most of our stores have. They had a lot of parts I needed at fairly reasonable prices. Sure it was 4 times more than digikey, but at the same time they were fairly cheap and I was buying in single quantity.
The sales staff had no clue about electronics, but they tried to help, and never tried to sell me anything I didn’t need.

Yep, another former Shacker checking in. I started in October of 1986 and worked in stores in NY and PA until “Thirteenth Month” 1996. (and met my wife at the last mall I worked in…

I remember when market cycle on computers was 18 months. Remember the Tandy 2000? More than twice the computer than the PCjr.

I remember selling my first 17-1000, fully loaded it had to weigh about 20 pounds, or at least it felt that way (go ahead an name that product)

I helped set up the satellite dish in the front window of the Westbury Store, and then took it down when I sold it.

I worked in 01- stores, 11- stores and 01+ stores. I managed V stores.

So, now having introduced myself, here’s my $.02 The core RS customer first went in with their parent to pick up some “Force Feed” to solve a problem. Maybe it was a light bulb for a flash light, or an F81 connector. Perhaps it was a wire from the 15 series. They did not go in to get their arm twisted to get things they didn’t need. Anyone else remember “30/3/2″? My customers came in to get problems solved, I learned to write and draw upside-down so that I could make diagrams for my customers across the counter. Please, now-a-days it’s more like “You’ve got questions, they’ve got blank stares.” I go in, and they ask if they can help me, trust me kiddy, I’ve put up more peg-hooks than you’ve ever seen. I (still) have all my Mimms books.

So, here it is, your core customer and the person who will keep the company going will be looking for a hobbyist behind the counter who shares their passion for do-it-yourself electronics. And going forward will understand the pros and cons of different dev boards, has built their own computers, can solder, and enjoys passing their knowledge on to others.

And doesn’t indulge high pressure sales techniques.

I’ll take BS for 600 ..

The only thing RS could do to stand out would be to break with the pack. Instead of emphasizing the sales and the marketing, it would help if they had a real vision. Not one of these corporate committee visions, to be revised every year as a way to update to market positioning. Get some dedicated to something, and make it work! Don’t ditch YOUR customer base just because someone else has a bigger customer base this year! If they could demonstrate real support for the DIY set by stocking kits, parts and tools, ditch the phones and cheap toys, and terminate the hard-sell techniques, some of us might venture back.

IDK, maybe they can’t make enough money from parts, kits and tools to keep paying the rent for the stores, in which case the sad fact would be that the DIY’er friendly store concept from 1978 just won’t fly in 2011. Actually, I think that’s pretty much the case, and what we have here is marketing execs trying to think of new ways to trick people into coming in the door .. so that they can continue to practice the iCrap hard sell. If they want to do that, they should go with free coffee and fresh cookies.

I’d like to see many of the same things as others here would, There is a real explosion of creativity going on right now with the emergence of open source hardware, and I think RS could immediately pick up a lot of long-lost cred by leveraging their thousands of stores to help introduce people to that world – say by using their buying power to purchase innovative products that emerge out of all this activity.

Its great that they are asking for input. Perhaps they could do this, have an ongoing contest where each month they pick some cool homebrew electronics project that really stands out in usefulness, and then they offer it as a kit in their stores until stocks run out. They could set up an economic framework that would also help the inventor/designers get a bit of a start independently as businesses with that. The most popular ones could remain on sale in their stores. Some of them might become classic items of geek desire.

That could support new companies and inventors and drop costs down substantially.

What would I personally like to see them do that with?

1.) To be true to their roots, I’d like to see them offer an inexpensive HF band (1-30 MHz or even up to low VHF) SDR (software defined radio) receiver kit. Say for under $150.. (I think that could be possible, in volume)

2.) I’d like to see them offer a comprehensive collection of 1-wire sensors, temperature, humidity, relative air pressure, non-contact IR thermometer, USB adaptor for same, etc. as well as powered air registers, solenoid valves, for use in a sophisticated home energy savings/home automation environment.

3.) I’d like to see them sell a basic single board computer that could boot off of flash memory, and display to commodity hardware – as well as use USB peripherals, WITH built in Ethernet, that supported ipv6, that could run a complete Linux, and at least 128MB RAM, preferably more, for less than $75. Kind of like the innovative computer in a HDMI plug that was written about here last month. ( http://hackaday.com/2011/05/06/miniature-pc-packs-a-big-punch/ )

Or they could charge a bit more, and for each one that was bought at retail, they could GIVE one to a school *here in the US* that needed one to use in designing some cool project around it. Or to give to some kid who could use it and not break it.

But, also I think we need to understand the economic realities of the retail store these days.

Money is tight and we don’t want a resource like RS to vanish, sure they could be better but my guess is that they probably need to sell a lot of the stuff they do to stay open.

Not many young boys and girls are interested in electronics anymore. Everything is buy and throw away … no serviceable parts, no taking things apart … you can’t even get schematics or parts for most things.

There are so many posts here, I didn’t get to read them all, but did anyone mention that there used to be “corporate RS stores” and “privately owned RS stores”? They were very different. The private stores could do more things, and sell things that the corporate stores could not.

RS is great for quick-build things.

1) Stock Arduinos and Propeller boards. I see the very rare Basic Stamp but that’s it. On that side — don’t bother with the printed manual, or have some without and at a lower price: the URL is usually silkscreened on the PCBs anyway.

2) Rather than putting each individual 7805 or terminal block in a little plastic package, just put them in bins. This allows you guys to charge a bit less and probably make a bit more off each part, cuts waste, and increases effective available space.

3) Carry some thin wire, in different colors, for proto board interconnects!

4) You sell a very nice electronically controlled soldering station. Why do you never have the tips for it?

There is not enough money in components to support retail. Perhaps if they had a website with price & selection to compete with Digikey/Mouser they might pull in more business to the retail stores with add-on services, but I sure wouldn’t want to be writing the business plan.

Radio Shack was where I got my first kit in 1980. From there into Ham Radio, even commercial radio. I had many a kits from there. I don’t have a EE degree, but know a lot more than a few of our Electrical Engineers at work. They don’t even know about JTAG ports or how to use them. These are Engineers who got their degrees in the last 5 years. I had to bring in my JTAG cable from home to revive a piece they bricked with the wrong firmware.

Radio Shack’s kits, and books is how I started. I wish my son was as interested in electronics as I was, instead of just playing Xbox. I started with an Atari 2800.

I work between two of the biggest research facilities in the world. My everyday customers seriously are rocket scientists and particle physicists.

If I had a complete robotics asile with several thousand components, my store would be standing room only.

Oh, and I would comission HTC to create the CoCo4 to forward thing specs, like AMD C50 processor running Android x86….

Oh, and the remark about being run by a hobbyist. That is the perfect example of what a store manager needs to be. If I didnt buy it for my wife and kids already, I dont feel comfortable selling it to you till I know for sure that it is good.

I want to buy the goodies too!

Buy cell phones at Radio Shack if you want larger assortments of slower moving merchandise.

Oh, and parts bins (without packaging) can be counted by weight, instead of individual scanner zaps… BRILLIANT!

Man, if you could come in and pre-order a custom spec cell phone for your carrier of choice, (Sprint, ATT, T-Mobile), and have it delivered in 7 days, that would be truly EPIC!

That is what the Color Computer 4 should be!

CoCo4

Forget about discrete ICs, components.. no one designs hardware like that anymore these days.. Provide low cost MCU kits or PLD/FPGA kits that provide great educational as well as hobby needs. Those 100 in 1 science kits were great.. that’s how i got started in electronics.

My local radio shack has components but they don’t know shit about them. They are too concerned with what kind of cellphone they want to sell you and don’t give a shit about their other merchandise.

There are always going to be people that can bring products to the consumer cheaper, and with greater selection, but what I think would be really amazing would be to help people learn about those projects. Use the shack as a way to foster the creativity in young kids and adults the way it used to. I would gladly pay more to be able to go to a Radioshack with my son and have a workbench (and helpful employees) that could help us make something that would blow his mind! Please give this some thought, Radioshack. The personal touch is what’s missing now, and what the online retailers can’t provide.

Sincerely,
Clauson Atkin

As the owner and operator of Radioshacksucks.biz I have to say this. I WILL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT!

since most of the truly helpful comments are from people who remember those bygone ‘back in the’ days with far more electronics knowledge than myself, your only hope is to put all your resources into developing a time machine that will transport us all back to the time when you were relevant, and knew what people wanted instead of chasing a quick buck on trash we can get at Walmart.

Even if you found another niche, you have wasted any good will you had by doing exactly what is described in these posts. I haven’t been in a ‘Shack’ in decades, you have nothing I need or want. I sincerely doubt you have a clue on how to change that. Maybe you should pursue the sport-tuner market, that’s obviously booming.

Radio Shack will always be 20 years out of date to me. The world of electronics moved on without them. It’s too bad since with all the suggestions here, it could be better. How about supply parts for people who want to setup a DIY MAME cabinet? Or pinball machine parts?

The U.S. public education system intentionally suppresses the development of skills in science, engineering, and mathematics. So there’s no market for “Geek” or “Nerd” stuff. Give up on this Radio Shack. You’re better off stocking iPhones and anything else that Tweets or does Facebook. That’s where the money is for the foreseeable future.

When I was a young kid, we had the 350-in-one electronics project kits – little spring loaded connectors w/ components and wires, not really sophisticated, but good for learning. I see lots of places with simple robotics kits that probably young teens could build, and the new microcontrollers. Sadly I see less kids interested in electronics (and I grew up with a TV-repairman grandfather working on old tube sets, so I’m biased), and more interested in playing on their Xbox or texting on their phones. My first computer was the trs-80 model-I, and I built a stepper motor driver for it, and various other little things – nowadays you’d want PIC or arudino and USB interface or something, but I think the challenge is to show things that would interest kids into it… a robotic arm “kit” (like the old armatrons) that could be controlled via their laptop-pc?

Part of the problem I see is they’ve over the years alienated those of us that *are* “DIY’ers”, I rarely go to RS, not because I can get what I need online cheaper, but because quite honestly they carry almost nothing I need anymore. And if you’re going to ‘groom’ a new generation, you have to start young – they’ll be the “DIY” business of the future if you can get their interest.