I’d like to see them stock components useful for trending types of builds. To be able to drive a few blocks into town and buy what I need to get started on an intro servo walker or microcontroller type kit and start a project on a whim would be great.

They can’t make a profit celling phones or dvd players now, so they need a new market to study and bring a service to.

^ Same here Moo, the last time I was at RS was probably about the same, 7 yrs ago, a friends TV died in a lightning storm – popped a diode, cap and a 12v zener diode – I had the cap, and diode that would work, but no 12v zener – RS actually had them (I was surprised) for $1.49 for two (that, yes, I could have gotten far cheaper online, but would have taken days and dealing with online “minimum orders”). There are times when a little extra $ for a part you need “now” is appropriate.

It makes me sad to see how far RS has fallen.

20 years or so ago, when I was a kid just getting into electronics, I was a frequent customer at my local RS. I bought my first soldering iron there, my first 200-in-one kit, dev boards and parts and Forrest Mims books. I even saved up & bought my first multimeter & graphing calculator there (Casio FTW, before TI took over the market!)

The manager was a friendly neckbeard type who was always happy to see me come in with my dad. I think he was just excited to see a teenager interested in electronics. When the headphone jack wore out on my RS Walkman, I ordered the replacement part (back when all the manuals had schematics!) – he gave it to me ‘on the house’ when it came in. It probably only cost a buck or two, but it meant a lot to me. (I soldered it in & still use the Walkman today to dub old tapes to digital!)

In the late 90s my dad started working as an assistant manager at several RS stores, right around the time they started moving hard towards consumer goods. He was a low-pressure guy and hated the push to upsell (the “spiffs”, as they were called). He loved gadgets (and bought dozens on clearance and as Christmas gifts!), but didn’t know much about parts; still, he loved helping people find what they wanted, and I suspect you all would have liked doing business with him.

Dad left RS in 2004; I think he really didn’t care for the sales tactics anymore. By then, cell phones had replaced the multimeters in the display cases and the parts section had shrunk to a set of drawers. I haven’t bought anything there since. My local RS closed its doors a couple of years later & I suspect many more will follow soon.

stop the 3X markup and RS will be my new DIY mecca … until than allelectronics and sparkfun is my place

I totally agree with the post which recommended stocking products from Adafruit, Sparkfun, Maker Shed, Seeed Studios, Parallax, etc. Stock lots of Arduino shields!

Also, If I could buy all the parts (ALL!) to make any of the reprap designes (http://blog.reprap.org/), I’d be in and out of there all day long! I wouldn’t even mind paying extra just for having them all in 1 place.

Ditto, Lego Mindstorms and I’d love to see more of that old LabView stuff before it got all commercialized. No need for the fancy stuff – just a digital oscilloscope or two and a few voltmeters, counters, timers and RLC measuring devices that connect directly to my Macintosh (or pc or linux box) together with free software (charge for the device – give the software away).

Maybe even a PLC or two – you know, to talk to the house! Make some software to use iPads as home video intercom/surveillance/heating-cooling-control and sell those, too, along with the gizmos that’ll talk to’em! I want my house to be able to talk via xbee or bluetooth or via a webpage!

Sell computer controlled coffee makers and desktop USB missile systems – have an in-store demo for kids. (Oooo — what could possibly go wrong? Well, maybe not that, then).

Also, I am a ham operator and it’d sure be nice to be able to buy coax (RG-213, RG-8, LMR-400) and connectors and strippers and crimpers and crimp-on BNC, PL-259, N n’stuff at a local Radio Shack store.

And some decent soldering supplies!

:)

I recommend taking a hard look at what is developing in the hackerspace market. True DIY today is way more than discrete electronic components. Today DIYers want 3D printing capabilities, laser cutting services, surface mount capabilities, multilayer PCB fabrication, to robotics parts and kits. How about something like a Bioloid Premium robot kit for a few hundred dollars rather than the thousand plus it costs to get now online. Take a hard look at what DIYers are doing today, the market is huge, much bigger with more consumers spending way more than in the old days of HAM radio.

Grew up looking at the catalog as my ‘wish book’. Last time I went looking for a panel mount switch, found 1 option. Also too expensive. Very disappointing to see the 100-in-1 (or similar project kits) fall into less and less complex arrangements. (Essentially dumbed down.) This is how I taught myself basic electronics. Drew me to explore theory and circuit design.

It’s hard to be a repair first, toss never person… when much of what is churned out is glued together, never meant to be disassembled, designed to break after a year or 2.

I had a similar experience of discovering sales person ineptitude… and followed closely by an attempt at getting hired as a young adult. They didn’t (don’t?) want knowledgable DIY staff. I aced the test, but no joy. Sad really, and the beginning of the end for me. I have hardly stepped foot in one. And the last 3 times I have been there were disappointing… leading me to go elsewhere.

offer DIY workshops. Home depot, lowes and even some organic grocery stores offer day / workshop on how to do diff stuff with tools and supplies your can find in store.

I would like to see some microcontrollers and programming accessories (something cheaper than the Basic Stamp kit). More advanced serial bus components such as GPS, A2D would make integration easier.

Being able to integrate this stuff with things like phones would be pretty cool.

Some board layout software that links into preferred manufacturers could bring RS referral money. A project store would be cool too where I could buy or sell projects.

The last time I was in my local Cellular Shack, I needed a balun to connect my 75-ohm TV coax to the apartment’s old 300-ohm antenna line. This is not an exotic part. I knew the sales associate, who greeted me at the door, wouldn’t know what I was talking about if I asked for a “balun”, so I asked for an “adapter” that went from 300-ohm twin-lead to 75-ohm coax. It took 10 minutes of rummaging about the tiny parts section of the store before we found it.

Turns out they call ‘em “matching transformers.”

Radio Shack, if you want to keep me from going to Electronics Warehouse, hire people who know which end of the soldering iron to hold.

73

Wow ! This one is easy: Realign your store locations to focus just on areas where they have neither Fry’s Electronics stores… nor broadband internet coverage. The fire Amy:

“Hola – I’m Jasmine… Ya-know… I don’t make like… things, but i totally can imugine how it feels when you like… make things and stuff… it’s totally betchin and stuff…”

And hire the entire female former cast of TechTV.

Here in Australia, Dick Smith (a store that, like Radio Shack, used to sell electronic components but these days mostly sells computers, TVs, DVDs, iPods/iPod docks and all sorts of gizmos) used to sell (and may still sell, I am not sure) a series of books and kits called Funway into Electronics.

The first volume and first kits came with a blue plastic board with holes and a bunch of components. You screw the components into the board (so you may have the leg of one component and the leg of another component screwed into one hole) and make fun projects. Then you unscrew it all and screw it in a different configuration and make something else.

The kits for the second and third volume came with actual PCBs that you assembled and soldered together.

Kits such as these would be something Radio Shack (who probably sold similar things in the past before they decided to copy the Worst Buy business model and start ramming overpriced cellphones and accessories down the throat of the guy who just wanted to buy a new battery for his TV remote) could do well. Sell a bunch of simple-to-assemble kits (some of which could be no-solder kits for beginners/kids who cant safely use a soldering iron yet) that do really cool things when put together. Combine these kits with cheap microcontrolers like AVR and PIC for even more cool stuff. Robots and robotics would probably be very cool, even to today’s kids so start selling kits in that area. Something like a “build your own robot arm” project would be GREAT, especially if it came with a fully programmable microcontroler inside controlling how it moves.

Related to this they could also sell a “starter set” for those getting into electronics that could have a good beginners soldering iron, solder, wire cutters/strippers and other basic tools.

As for Forrest M Mims III, I remember that guy, I used to own one of his books once, the one about all kinds of basic integrated circuits with the hand-drawn diagrams making it look just like an engineers notebook.

I’m kind of jealous to see that you have stores that sell parts in the U.S. It may be crappy now, but it sells actual parts. In France, there are a few stores for the whole country. And even in online stores, you cannot have decent parts at decent prices, shipping is like $10 for a few resistors and you have them in 7+ days.
So, if I had a RS store in France, I would really enjoy seeing Arduino kits with, say, a LCD screen and an ethernet shield, a few selected parts to avoid stock problems and competent people to teach us because schools here do not teach technical stuff AT ALL before you are 17. Organizing workbenches to sell parts would generate crazy sales over here.

I agree with what others have said about community. The fact that there was no Radio Shack booth at the Maker Faire in San Mateo this weekend (the very *heart* of geekdom!) speaks volumes about the relationship between Radio Shack and the DIY community.

As a youth, I went into radio shack all the time. But there’s just no reason to. I guess if I had to pick three things it’d be …

1. Arduino boards and accessories
2. … uh…
3. … hmm…

I honestly can’t think of a 2 or 3. Sorry

Radio Shack could remake it’s reputation by stocking components regardless of the fact they may only sell say 100 over a year instead of it has to sell 100,000 to even be considered .

We used to have radio shack shops over here in the UK but think they have all gone now my local branch was a good source of components at one time then the decline began and i had to find another source in general it seems the hobby electronics supply chain is up the creak without a paddle world wide so buck the trend is a sure fire winner

I thought this was funny.

Back in the day radioshack had the spring + cardboard electronics kits. Then walls and walls of components. To top it off , a guy behind the counter to not only explain, but find every one of them. 1/4 of the store was radios.

Now a days , they have iPods and I pod docks . (literally) 1/4 of a store to ipods (none in stock though) with an assortment of 45 $ usb cables. And 6 $ memory cards with 13$ warranties. Dont forget the 1,000 $ 19 inch tvs. To top it off there are atleast 3 attempts in the visit to have a heart to heart about your cell phone.

Dear RatShack:

You want to compete with the power of the Internet? In your brick and mortar STORES?!?!?! Good luck with that: Electronics heads are (a) smart enough to look online, and (b) unwilling to pay 10000% markups on cheapo things unless they’re really, really desperate. I honestly don’t see you being able to get very much of my business through a storefront no matter what you’re doing, but if you have a website with great selection of electronics gear and great prices (including on shipping), then hey- why not?

I’m going to throw in again and say that RS has no real infrastructure in place to support this obvious marketing ploy.

How can you expect all these carefully groomed cell phone accessory salespeople to magically know something about DIY parts and tools overnight?

-and yeah I was also highly successful and sought after at my store as well, because I was knowledgeable FIRST, and THEN tried to see if they wanted to buy “other” stuff.

It’s surprising the kind of numbers you can pull down when the locals walk past the knuckleheads and right to you. Especially come school project time! They’d follow me and fill a bag and I’d sketch the circuit out for ‘em at the counter to boot.

Vitriol aside, the only thing I will miss about working at RS is the interaction with folks about their projects.
“Whatcha buildin’? Anything cool? Anything diabolical?”
That was usually enough to get the ball rolling.
Once they realized I knew my stuff and am passionate all doors were opened.

It is the kind of thing Radio Shack USED to be known for, but that is a value they don’t teach in “Business School” any more, if they ever did.

Tandy never was go great over here in the UK anyway and Maplin is just a waste of time & money for the most part, I would love a decent parts store but the internet has seen a end to that.

try stocking more than three 1k resistors for a start

I think Radio Shack should carry
1) arduino kits
2) fpga kits like papilio platform etc.
3) parallax propeller chips
4) any other hobby and/or embedded computing kits that can get people excited again about electronics and manipulation of signals from the real world for controlling computers. this is the cutting edge of actual hobby electronics today…

What Radio Shack should be is Maker Shack. A place for people to get together to build and learn how to build.

Less crap electronics, more kits, and more connections to local groups that make and build. Help us order things. Help us build things. Be the focus of a network of builders.

Have demos of arduino. Show hacks of kinect. Bring us the cool stuff we can do, and don’t try to compete with online retailers of commodity electronics.

in the UK, Tandy (who owned RadioShack) operated these places as ‘Tandy stores’. They are all now closed, because they were crap, for all the reasons people have mentioned. Unless they really pull something new out of the bag, RadioShack is surely doomed. @DrF is right about Maplin in the UK, which is far better than Tandy was, and has more knowledgeable sfatt, but simply can’t compete with the internet for prices and choice. Actual shops need to compete with things that internet can’t, which is the friendly help from knowledgable staff, free how-to classes, workshops, community stuff etc. I agree with all the suggestions about helping beginners with education and kits. Look at bookstores and art galleries, they always have events where people can go to meet authors/experts etc.

I suggest you pay a visit to Tainan city in Taiwan. The electronics shops there (and there are plenty of them) are teeming with customers, packed with stuff and staffed by knowledgeable people.

Because of the number of customers – who mostly know what they are looking-for – the staff don’t waste their time, or yours, trying to sell alternative/accessory crap. In one store – dare I say my favourite – I bought an oscilloscope (500$US) and a couple of transistors (a dollar between them) in one sale but on my next visit the staff were just as happy to sell me only a couple of resistors.

It was worthwhile for me to travel a hundred-miles to Tainan to visit those stores.

Geoff
Do you remember the Tandy range of ‘stuff’?

1) Kits
2) Kits
3) Kits

In that order.

I’m not talking about trivial things. I’m talking about things like Heathkit used to carry. Sure, it’s probably not economical to build a radio rather than buying one, but it’s a heck of a lot more fun. That’s what we’re really buying.

You have to decide first, are you a consumer goods retailer, in which case your going to die in the market when everyone undersells you by magnitudes of order and its not working out so well so far is it?, or are you a niche electronics retailer whos miserably failing to engage/has alienated over the years their target market?

My suggestions, do ALL the suggestions, but personally:-

Do things to build a hobbyist community around each shop, have little local build compo’s, sponsor hackerspaces, have a saturday am thing where you can get someone to teach basic soldering etc who knows electronics for questions from more advanced people and maybe help in little ways. What happens is the hobbyists come in, but they buy things for people they know, they recommend stuff to people they know and that recommendation is taken seriously as they “know stuff”.
Keep some of the ham gear, its not a great deal of floorspace to stock some pl259′s and a 12v regulated psu (I still have my UK micronta branded rs 12v PSU with crowbar etc) and they have a good crossover with the hobbyists. The average ham isnt expecting the counter staff to know how to calculate stuff in his head, but knowing the name of the pieces would go a long way.

Put some hacker make toys in the windows, have a 3d printer instore and rent out time on it to print peoples stuff (this would be AWESOME and would be a major draw for me and others Im sure to watch our stuff growing), offer the pcb proto service (but 3day turnaround, and make the pcb’s in a central facility and mail them the stores for collection to reduce costs), maybe extend it to cnc laser cutting templates for enclosures or robotics with a lead time to make it pay.

stock little project kits, starting with the discreet electronic dice etc, then arduino etc based stuff.

DO THE VENDING MACHINE IDEA FOR OUT OF HOURS! I think that alone would put you on every hobbyist’s map, and they’d return in the daytime for other stuff.

Your all talking like the hobbiest market wont sustain RS, but it will as witnessed by all the other stores now surviving quite happily in the void left by RS changing tack years back, as long as RS get their niche right instead of trying to be yet another crappy plastic retailer.

The last time I stepped foot in a RS (or tandy as they were called in the uk) was for its clearance sale when it sold off all of its electronics parts and interesting stuff (and I spent $300+ on clearance stuff, happy days). Once that had all gone, I never set foot in there again and within 5 years the branch had gone. It lost its niche, and the niche it re-targeted at was full of better competition.

Also the comment about the managers and staff, they have to have the right attitude to make this work, and that goes WAY up the chain to the head honcho’s. You have to get people either with a passion for it, or at least who are prepared to grow into the passion. That means setting attitudes during hires, education of staff, doing stuff to hire the right kind of people in etc. Thats a huge amount of work and skill and I wish you luck.

Whats certain if this is a marketing ploy just to get more community people in. RS will be dead within a decade.

I think Maplin is OK here in the Uk.

I will always use their website to see if they carry a part before checking anywhere else. The site allows me to see which local stores have the part in stock so I can go with a printed out parts list and pick the BoM up in person.

They also have some nice tools and stuff to drool over.

The price and range is not as good as online only stores, but the Maplin model is a step in the right direction.

Regarding the model cars, flashing PC peripherals etc. They need to sell this kind of “crap” to keep the stores afloat.

Do you seriously think you could run a chain of high street stores selling resistors and capacitors? Further more, do you expect putting £0.01 mark-up on these components will pay for the staff wages, ground rent, lighting etc etc.

Get real!

Also a second business model that could be looked at is that os RS components in the UK – http://www.rswww.com

This company is one of the mainstays of every engineering business in the UK. For tools, consumables, components.

They have “collection counters” throughout the country, where you can pick up the stuff you ordered online. This would probably be a cheaper alternative to high street stores, what with the cost insurance, prime location land. You could put the counters on industrial estates…

Engage three established sources and offer quick access to a good sampling of their catalog: Parallax, SparkFun, Adafruit. Do it in a big way, especially in markets far from these companies. I would buy lots more if the stuff were right in front of me, without the delay of shipping.

Philcap Electronics in Akron just put out a rack of 1980s Radio Shack parts they had in storage. 7400 parts, line drivers, 6A Mosfets, some CA3080 transconductance opamps. It was like traveling back in time, and I had a blast. Radio Shack helped get us into this; it would be great if they took some steps to help us get more out of it.

I also remember Tandy (in France). Thankfully, they aren’t here anymore since around the beginning of the 90′s.
Now, I just wish the same to Electronique Diffusion. They were great some years ago, now they try to sell cheap crap at horrible prices :-/ And their sellers don’t know a thing :(

There are a lot of great business ideas here for RS. Unfortunately, the way most company CxO’s work is that “they know best” and aren’t interested in building a long term customer base. They only “look out” maybe 6-9 months for an ROI.

Radio Shack is on its deathbed and the ideas presented here would take 2 years, maybe more, before an ROI was realized. I doubt the CxO’s or the shareholders will have the stomach to wait that long.

I wish them luck, and who knows maybe the current management has the balls to see this through, but somehow, I doubt it.

RIP RS.

DIY Alternative Energy Projects

I’ll second the RScomponents comment by @alan. Combined with a PCB service that would be excellent and well worth a bit of extra markup that would run. I really like this model albeit the markup is often still high for low count orders and availability of DIY components could be better.

Additionally there is one thing no one seems to have mentioned. A stock of parts, resistors, transistors etc does not get outdated and loose value as a store of ipods and cellphones does. So in this regard perhaps there is a benefit to selling parts than cellphones?

My local RS is helpful for small things that I need NOW, and for PCBs and etchant etc. It’s sad when the staff has to ask me what Ferric Chloride and basic components like capacitors are for O_o

A streamlined check-out process would be nice. RadioShack’s computer system must be hugely byzantine. It shouldn’t take 5 whole minutes to checkout with cash.
I hate it because everytime I “pop” in, it takes 15-30 minutes to get back out. That’s not shopping-that’s grabbing what I need, waiting for the poor sob(s) ahead of to check-out, then my round of torture.

Physical stores are a joke these days, especially in Australia.
You can buy the same DVI adapter from eBay and have it arrive at your door for AU$2.39, its not even at for sale at Dick Smiths (they brought out Tandy(AUS version of Radio Shack)) and Jay Car has it for AU$23.95.

An extra $20 just to have it now, no thanks…

Went into a Radio Shack about a year ago to get some parts to build a custom circuit that I had found plans for on the net. I’d never built one before did a ton of research and decided to try it vs buying one from an online vendor. I went to my local shack expecting them to have all I needed. I knew they would as a kid my father worked at one and they always had stuff like that, little did I realize those were the glory days. I had to go to three different stores to buy what I needed. 1 for the blank, 1 for the acid, 1 for the components. The kicker, not a one had tinning wash. Needless to say no amount of “what can we do” will get me in there for anything other than batteries, and I can get those from Batteries Plus which is closer.

I think they should start carrying software hacking “kits”. To me, it’s the obvious evolution of tech that would cater to many of their core customers.

It would hardly take up any shelf space and pricing could/should be reasonable while still profitable.

“How to hack a kernal”
“How to hack a network”
“How to hack an OS”

Some nicer tools would be good.

Notes to fellow posters:

1. They can’t have cheap parts _and_ knowledgeable staff. Knowledgeable workers cost $$, $$ is made via markup.

2. Maintaining a retail storefront costs $$. Buying a part that sits on the shelf for years until someone happens to buy it means that they need to mark that up a bit to make up for the time.

Gotta love the marketing department! Why do sales people rarely actually know anything about the products they sell? This lady is in the wrong line of work! Several years ago we had a Radio Shack dot com store around here and that store was more DIY oriented than any Radio Shack I’ve ever seen. That would be the direction I would go. Don’t know why it closed, always seemed pretty busy and the rent had to be pretty cheap considering the area it was in. Radio Shack played a role in my getting interested in electronics, but their component prices were always prohibitive to my 7 yr old allowance, and even today they never come to mind when I’m building a project. DIY isn’t supposed to be expensive! My advice: carry more, charge less. And oh, my 3 items? (are you serious?) Maybe Duck tape, hammers, and vinegar.

I suspect that project-level stock of electronic components at Radio Shack is a ship that has sailed. However, there is another part of their roots that they can return to that would bring more income, and could lead to making the electronics business more possible.

Aside from components, Radio Shack used to be the place you could go to find the oddball connector or cable you needed for ANYTHING… Or, at least, the parts and documentation you’d need to BUILD that cable. Radio Shack is where you went when you needed the accessories that the big boxes didn’t sell. Now, it’s the place you avoid because they have a vastly overpriced subset of what the big boxes sell, with an oddly passive-aggressive high-pressure, low-attention sales pitch.

Last week, I was looking for a DisplayPort-to-DVI adaptor. If you work for a company that issues you a laptop, your next model probably won’t have DVI but will likely have DisplayPort. If you want to connect a spare monitor at home, you might want this cable. I wasn’t surprised that Best Buy doesn’t stock it. Of course Radio Shack doesn’t… but fifteen years ago, they would have.

I live in a city that is very, very distant from any television stations. Radio Shack -used- to carry a full range of antennas and accessories that could be used to put up a big antenna on a tall pole with an amplifier and rotator. Now? Right.

I’d love to connect the internal speakers on my treadmill to my stereo using the tape output. I need a small amplifier and some sort of volume pad. I’m just not the sort of nuts-and-bolts guy to build my own. Radio Shack used to carry a range of unusual radio parts like these. If I could order out of a twenty-year-old catalog, I could get this done in short order. Now? I’d be lucky if I could even find a 30-foot headphone cable with the right ends to connect the two things.

So, aside from all the parts comments—and I would love to see Radio Shack return to stocking a wide selection of electronics parts at a reasonable, competitive markup—I’d like to see
1. A wide range of cables, adapters, and installation accessories that are -not- commonly stocked at the big box stores but essential when you need them; good quality at a reasonable price (a small premium for instant satisfation, yes, but not a 1000% markup on crap Monoprice wouldn’t touch).
2. Fewer electronics items that you can buy at Best Buy (or Target, no less), and more items that solve problems that Best Buy can’t help you with.
3. Ditch the actual cellphone sales; start carrying a full range of essential accessories like chargers, data cables, spare batteries, standalone battery chargers, cases, etc. And carry these things not just for current models, but for stuff several years back: anything someone might still be using, even the unusual brands.

In other words: Stop trying to be the place where people go to buy a TV or a cellphone. Return to being the no-brainer go-to place where you go -after- you buy the TV or cellphone to get the bits to improve, connect, and maintain them.

From there, the way to grow is into returning to providing the components to repair or build what you can’t profitably stock…

I guess the management at RS finally woke up realized they were going to be extinguished if all they offered was incompetent sales people pushing the same stuff as bigger, better-funded competitors.

People have given a lot of good ideas above. I will second kits and parts from places like Sparkfun and Adafruit.

The biggest advantage that RS has over competitors is location – they are all over the place. They should offer things that people can’t easily get locally. I would be interested in seeing:

- An decent parts selection. The parts don’t have to all be bubble-packaged on pegboard. They could have high density storage bins in back, so you can get a lot of parts in a relatively small space, and have a person (or robot mechanism) pull the parts. I wouldn’t mind, and might even prefer, placing order online and then driving over to pick it up. Develop an online system where I can keep, or share, projects. Imagine if people started including links to shared BOMs at RS in their projects because it is the simplest way for people to get stuff quickly at and reasonable cost.
- Provide data sheets. It may just be a monitor and keyboard so you can look at pdfs, but let people look at details, email the data sheets to themselves, or perhaps print them out.
- Provide services. 3-d printing, laser-cutting, laser etching, pcb fabrication. You don’t have to have huge industrial-size machines, and you don’t need them in every store. The first 3 of those could also expand the customer base beyond the hackers you find here to artists and others. It might be useful to have local store-to-store delivery, so I could order, say, a 3-d project and pick it up at a local store without a 3-d printer 24 hours later.
- Work with/sponsor a local hacker space.
- Sponsor classes to teach people the basics

Price is important. I wouldn’t have a problem paying a little bit more to get what I need now – it saves me burning $5 in gas to get to the nearest Frys – but there is an upper bound on it. After all, the cheapest Mouser shipping takes only 2 days to reach me. However, their shipping does cost $5 or $7 for small orders, so there’s some room there.

If the local RS has a $4 picking charge on a $50 order, to pull my order out of the aforesaid bins and have it ready from me, and I can have it in 20 minutes, I would do that rather than pay for shipping from Mouser and get it 2 days later, or 4 days if the delivery period crosses a weekend.

We have maplin in the UK, its the same sort of crap instore that you get in RS but they do have a web presence and anything not in stock in store they can have delivered, either to your door or to the store for pickup.

One issue is that it is over priced but in a pinch for a handful of resistors/caps/transistors/diodes you don’t mind paying $3 if it’s the difference between the project progressing or stalling.

The other issue is they have an incredibly poor stock level indicator for stores, train your staff to get off their arse and physically eyeball the part to confirm its existence if a customer phones, don’t rely on a crappy database or write a decent database and train your staff to update properly or do all 3.

You don’t necessarily need uber-geeks to run stuff but knowing the basics about basic parts should be a minimum. If you want to be the people that ‘have answers’ you’d better have answers when people ask!!

Engage with your target community on a regular basis not just to save your ass (provide information on how basic parts work, create a forum, staff it with uber-geeks that know their kit etc.).

Stop over-pricing your retail goods, people like us will shout loud and proud over this as we’re sharp on retail pricing. I have no problem being in maplin and advising fellow customers that they can buy a product way cheaper and supply a web address where they can find it.

KITS KITS KITS
Kits with a working demo so when my daughter comes in with me she can ask “What’s that? Can we make that?” and I can say “Yes. Let’s do it this weekend.”
I don’t care why they’re doing it, and I’m not overly sensitive to the prices. If I’m doing a project I’ll order online but for the quick convenient buy I don’t mind paying a little more.

To little too late, the MBA’s have already destroyed this company. Of the two remaining stores in my city (used to be five), neither one carry electronic parts anymore.

To Quote MRC

the problem is that the Niche market Radio Shack once occupied is no longer present. they had three things going for them at the time:

1: the popularity of HAM and CB radio as a hobby

2: no internet to cut into their business share for parts, devices, and supplies

3: knowledgeable staff (for the most part) that could help customers, and sell them stuff they needed. not push crap they didn’t.

#1 is no longer large enough to support a nationwide chain business.

2&3 can be found on the net, and shipping is cheap enough to be competitive.

unless modern consumer devices take a turn for the self-repairable, I wish Radio Shack luck in its continued survival.

Digi took up the torch when RadioShack dropped out. I just do not see them trying to play catch up

Provide FPGA programming hardware and 3D printers at the store; VHDL/Verilog and CAD/CAM applications on the web. Provide Engineers to quickly review the designs for GLARING errors [direct shorts to ground, structures which will collapse immediately]; and then provide summary suggestions to the builder but ALLOW them to fail. Provide discounts for repeat runs with minor changes.

The proper electronics parts and misc mechanical parts to stock will quickly identify themselves. And don’t forget the super-sized 24/7 vending machine stocked with emergency spares.

As everyone else here has posted, stock the stores with the types of people who immediately annoy corporate suits; but engage the builder (not DIY customer you marketing ignoramus) down the bizarre unique paths projects follow.

Basically, become a serious electronics hobby / computer shop that a field service guy from Lockheed can walk into and get something he needs (with in reason).

Resistors, transistors, bread boards, ect. Soldering supplies. Cable fabrication equipment.

Fill the CompUSA void: computer mother boards, power supplies, CPU’s, RAM. In addition to the various commodity cards, stock some DIO boards, stuff like that.

Software – maybe a couple of racks of cheap CD’s full of essential tools. Some Linux distros. Developer tools.

Analytical stuff, o-scopes, pulse generators, DC power supplies, inverters.

Stop drastically inflating cable prices. Yes I need that 6 foot Firewire cable right now, no I will not pay $60 for it.

Still sell the phones and stuff… online. Speaking of which, compete with Newegg would be a cool thing too.

PS – a few public terminals that folks can download manuals from and double check part numbers specs would be sweet!