We can all agree that RadioShack isn’t exactly the DIY mecca it once was.
What used to be a haven for amateur radio operators, tinkerers, and builders alike has devolved into a stripmall mainstay full of cell phones and overpriced junk. RadioShack knows that they have fallen out of your good graces, and since you are the demographic that put them on the map, they are appealing to the DIY community for input.
They want to know what is important to you – what you would like to see at your local RadioShack, and what would bring you back through their doors. Obviously price is a huge concern, especially with online outlets like Digikey and Mouser just a few clicks away. At the end of the day however, if you require a component RIGHT NOW, it would be nice to have the ability to grab some parts locally.
We’re well aware of the fact that this is all part of a marketing scheme, but if it helps stock your local store with a few odds and ends that are actually helpful, it won’t hurt to let your voice be heard.
Stick around to watch the video appeal from RadioShack’s brand manager, [Amy Shineman].
[Thanks komradebob]
[via ARRL.org]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxyDab_s_lY&w=470]
Last time I visited a Radio Shack they didn’t have any fuses. I got them at the Walmart nearby :-)
“Restock all the Forrest Mims III books that I grew up with as a kid, then stock the parts needed to build those projects.
Oh, and start selling those old-fashioned 200-in-one project boxes again. ”
Posted at 7:28 pm on May 27th, 2011 by asheets
First to steal my lines.
I hung out there as a kid, from 12-ish to 18-ish when I got a job working for the manager in his side biz, music-man. Amazing job.
Anyway I bought mims book, and a xxx-in one kit with money I earned cutting lawns etc.
I bought tonnes of parts, too many surprize-packs, lunch for the manager, and the stuff sent in for repair that the customer no longer wanted (or died waiting for it (-true)).
I played with every item in the store, specially the scanners and then the computers arrived.
I learn 8080/z80 assembly having enough time to get beyond BASIC, and made store adverts to run when I wasn’t tying up the computer.
I never was an employee, but I sold tonnes of stuff to customers, what THEY needed, then pointed them to the sales staff to ring it up, my friends.
It was a store beside our 7-11 slurpee store, so 7-11 & RS were a hang out.
The kids brought their parents in, and the parents brought their kids in, it worked.
So what to suggest, the books (simple for 10 year olds, kits and parts to make every project in the project books just like the mims style.
Bring in the young kids, who will bring in the parents, who bring in the kids who while waiting for the parents will look at kits and will dream about buying things, and bring in parents to look at it “one more time”. You need young and old.
Battery of the month club worked!!
Stop over charging for everything.
Adding the radioshack name DOES NOT make it more valuable.
Staff that have a clue, more than a social life.
Dear RS:
It’s not about parts, really. It’s about community. Once upon a time, there was a community of makers, and there you were. Now, finding someone who has even heard of Ohm’s law is difficult.
You might try things to create community. Classes, meetups, sponsoring local science fairs, and the like.
I mean, if you offered a series on electronics, embedded systems and/or robotics, I’d find that quite interesting.
Imagine a how-to, complete with RS part numbers, along with guidance, at the end of which you have a digital whatever that you can say you built…
RS these days feels “sterile” to me. If you want to return to your roots, you need to inspire discovery.
I’m happy that Radio Shack is asking the question, but I’m afraid it is too late for them. I am one of the lucky ones with a fantastic electronics shop located almost half way between my house and my nearest radio shack. A place where a resistor is a few cents, not $1.20 for a 5 pack that has more money in the packaging than the contents. Somewhere I can get quality 50ohm cable, voltage regulators, etc. When I compare to my local radio shack, which does have a half of a small aisle dedicated to components, they just don’t have the store space even if they got rid of the mountains of cell phones and remote control vehicles.
@ NXTreme
In one part of your suggestion you state they should sell arduino starter kits, which I agree is a good idea, but you suggest selling them for $70. Then in another point you make you suggest that they start selling things at a decent prices, which I also agree with, but your first point and your last point are at two ends of the same pole. An arduino starter kit for $70? Why would I pay that when I can get one for under $30? Wasn’t that your whole point to your third comment? Cheaper to pay shipping right?
Revive something like the OpenMoku project and sell a truly open, hacker friendly, unlocked cell phones and accessories.
Contribute to the GnuRadio project and sell a truly open, hacker friendly software defined radios with unlocked codecs.
Contribute to PC based open source development and sell turnkey linux and BSD appliances tuned for specific kinds of users, but still retaining their unlocked, open nature.
…and, sure, carry parts you can’t find at Home Depot, like a tape-measure marked in centimeters, heat sink extrusion, phosphor bronze sheet stock, and WR-90 waveguide.
To quote MRC, Plain, and a number of others who mentioned it – “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”
I call BS.
NPR – “Nearly 700,000 Americans have ham radio licenses — up 60 percent from 1981, a generation ago. And the number is growing.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125586086
UP SIXTY PERCENT, it’s not that HAMs or the hobby are declining, those of us that are involved just realize how little RS caters to us.
I prefer to head down the road to Iowa Radio Supply, where pretty much anything I need is in stock at a reasonable price, and they have friendly hackers behind the counter to answer questions. [No, I don’t work there. It’s just a stark contrast to RS.]
The one thing that could benifit the crumbling shack is to stock the place, not with more parts at cheaper prices (though this will also help), but with the type of people you want to attract.
You don’t attract the DIYselfer with someone trying to sell them something. Most DIYselfer’s already know what they want…they just don’t know where it is. When I walk into the shack looking for, say, a 1200 microfarad cap rated for 100v (which they don’t stock…shock) why the hell would I appreciate 3 people that have never thought about what I’m talking about. On top of that why would I appreciate them trying to sell me something else? I need a cap not a cellphone or accessories. As a tech geek even my two year old phone is usually better than their newest.
Tripp, that’s cool that they are trying to train their employees in electronics. R.S.’s employ so many geeks at one time or another in their lives, that right there is an opportunity to either leave a positive experience or a negative one, and get a beachhead in a lot of different communities. These days many kids can’t afford to go to college, and retail isn’t a good long term goal either for technical types, but RS should take the long view that maybe there is some in between zone where they can both get above-average employee intelligence for a few years of their lives and also leave people with something that will come back to help the company years or decades later when they least expect it. Few companies have been around as long as RS, and chances are they will be with us at least a decade or two longer. Anything they can do to increase technical literacy in the US is positive on so many levels. Its literally our bread and butter. The banking Ponzi schemes wont do it.
http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyOfficers?symbol=RSH&WTmodLOC=C4-Officers-5
Artificial stock growth from selling high markup china-container stuff is going to bite them in the long run when shareholders wonder why they can’t keep the expected rise in profit.
It seems that the model car hobby shop down the street does great business, so that is a good area. Others have mentioned arduino, adafruit, and similar DIY stuff. Concentrate on mix-n-match possibilities like arduino shields, but maybe with PIC processors instead. Give enough documentation to make a purchase, but leave the detailed docs on the internet. You have enough clout to make a standard.
I was lucky enough to have a RadioShack.com store near my house some years ago, and I was sorry to see it close. The breadth of the products was very important.
How about the ability to make PCBs in store from files that you can upload on the web? Like one hour photo labs. Now that would be awesome. They could also have lots of files on the net that you could pick out and have made for pickup. They could offer pre-designed kits that could be packaged in store on demand.
@jeff: yep..
*If you’re going to sale cheap imported stuff, do it so you can have an edge in the final markup*
They will have to accept that training employees will mean that they will bail if they don’t get paid more as well, pay them more, and make the job fun for them as well. The economy is so torpid right now that I’m sure lots of quality employees with the right tech know how are out there who would seek the jobs out if they paid more of a living wage. Not a huge amount of money, just a better wage than they did in the past. Otherwise, the training will not be so cost effective because employees will then leave.
US companies in general need to be more willing to train their own employees as nobody else will do it. Schools don’t teach things like electronics, although they should. I think they should teach basic electronics literacy just like they used to teach machine shop. The bounty we would see from that as a society could be substantial.
I see the skeptics have come out. Well I am not a skeptic. I think Radio Shack CAN do this. How? Here’s my 3:
1. Stock Arduino kits and parts to work with them.
Arduino’s is one of THE maker tools now. It’s great because you can do a lot of things with it. Put a kit that has a board, a LCD, some motors and gears and call it a Maker Kit. Team up with Make magazine and they can get you some good ideas for this.
2. Gumstix
These are the next cool hacker/maker toy. Runs Linux….what is not to like??
3. Team up with System 76 or ZAreason and sell Linux based laptops.
I know it said 3, but I will add one more:
4. Community Room
Add a community room to all Radio Shacks and have a local hacker do a session on Arduino or Gumstix. Host Linux User Groups. Build a community.
Basic sensors and prebuilt Arduino-compatible hardware, ALONG WITH AN EXPLANATION THAT SINCE THOSE DEVICES ARE PART OF AN OPEN HARDWARE PROJECT PEOPLE CAN MAKE THEM THEMSELVES.. That would be radical for RS, but as Middle America does not have a clue about what open source is it might end up paying off handsomely in that millions of people might incidentally discover Linux and the hundreds of thousands of free apps on Linux that they can use, which is like prometheus giving fire to humanity in its significance. It could resurrect middle america’s economic prospects without any financial outlay from government whatsoever, as if by magic. WHAT else could potentially do that, nothing!
The downside of course is that people would make more, and a very small number of businesses with failing business models would fail faster, OTOH, far more new, innovative businesses would spring up.
If we don’t act soon, it will be too late. Instead of the creative boom, we’ll see a crime boom and geek kids will be building meth labs instead of rockets to the stars. Seriously.
We cannot let that happen, just because some clueless but powerful people are afraid of a culture that encourages sharing information without wanting money in return.
On these comments everyone is saying that they are always being asked to buy batteries from radioshack. This has never happened to me. It could be because I’m 13 and buying ferric chloride alone. It could also be because whenever I go to radioshack (total count: 3) I buy two or three completely random parts for different projects and they are too busy wondering why I’m in my early teens and am buying electronics parts than thinking about what they are supposed to say. It could also be that they think I have no idea what I’m doing.
There’s my £0.014
@cknopp – I’ve listed the specific parts I think RS should carry on the YouTube comments, but I can reiterate them here. Other than the stuff that is already carried (LEDs and such), add microcontrollers! Atmel’s and PICs. On the Atmel side keep a few different models in stock (such as the ATMega328 and ATTiny’s) and on the PIC side, stock a few PIC10’s, 12’s, 16s, and 18s. I think that it was a great idea to add some of the Parallax sensors, keep that going!!
Also, keep a PICKit and a AVR programmer in stock.
Here’s the thing:
I actually go to radioshack. Here’s why. I live in a small town. Radio shack is in town. Norvac (a local electronics store with better selection) is 45 minutes away. I HATE waiting for shipping. like hate. I would much rather tell someone that I don’t want a cell phone if I can get my part in town. I’m planning on going there later to day in the hopes of finding magnet wire to make LED lighting for my RC plane. (I hope they have it!!) If I could get simple things like PICs in town I would be there every week.
That said, the tools are a joke. But if I’m going to buy a tool, I’ll probably buy a decent one online. I would buy them in town if I could, but I don’t see that happening.
Finally, I don’t really mind paying more. PICs cost between 3 and 5 dollars, usually, I wouldn’t balk at paying $10. The convenience is there.
I guess I have one last thing to say. It has been said before in the comments, but corporations these days have no confidence. Quit chasing the fad. When you enter the same market as every other retailer in town there is nowhere to go, but to race to the bottom. If you’re the only one in 45 minutes with electronics parts I’ll pay more to get them. I even have an IEEE store on campus, but they don’t carry microcontrollers (which is insane, but I digress).
I wanted to buy cat5 cable to crimp myself I couldn’t find it so I went on my way but as I was going I was asked if I found everything. I mentioned the cat5 cable and the clerk proceeded to show me telephone wire and audio hook up wire. It was as if he had never ventured to the back of the store. I told him it should have 8 strands and the clerk replied that he thought cat5 only had 5 strands. Also I have experienced the bomb joke when I bought some resistors about 5 years back when I was just getting started.
Every time I’m in a huge pinch to get something, anything, for a project, they dont have it or its so insanely expensive, its not worth buying. $10 for a little plug, really?
Bad experience: Two weeks ago, I needed a rugged SPST toggle switch that would handle 20 to 30 amps. I wound up buying it at AutoZone because the Radio Shack store didn’t have it — just cheap flimsy ones.
Ideas:
1. Offer a rapid turnaround PCB service. Provide cheap/free design tools that will handle relatively small & simple boards, then accept the designs either online or at the store, and have the completed boards at the store for pickup in “x” days/hours. A large store could justify its own machine, while smaller ones could share one.
2. Sell MAKE magazine, Parallax kits, etc. at the store and stock the parts that the projects use.
3. Stop trying to “up-sell” unless it is DIRECTLY RELATED to what the customer is buying! If I’m buying a bunch of components, reminding me of wire and solder is OK, but DON’T try to sell me a cell phone! Don’t bug me if all I want to do is browse the aisles for project ideas.
4. Hire people who are enthusiastic about DIY. If I come in to buy an Arduino kit and the employee tells me about the cool thing she did with her’s (yes, hire women too — they exist), you can bet that I’ll be back — to compare notes and buy parts for my next project.
5. Where to find enthusiastic DIY employees? Simple, offer free training to anyone, much as Home Depot does. They teach people to set tile, lay bricks, and do plumbing repairs. You could teach soldering, basic electronics, kit construction — all the way up to microcontroller programming. You now have a pool of both employees AND customers!
6. Accept the fact that customers will be both less knowledgeable and more knowledgeable than you! Encourage and help the ones who need help, and learn from those who are more advanced. Building relationships with customers is more important than today’s sale.
Keep the prices low. $40 for a printer cable is ridiculous. Unless the prices are more reasonable I’ll shop down the street.
Another idea that may help them, IF they decide to go with the hobby group. Do like Home Depot and Lowe’s home stores do, and offer classes on stuff. Start out with basic soldering and basic electronics and work up to the microcomputer (PIC and Arduino) dev boards, some basic programming etc…
Not trying to make EE’s or Engineers out of anybody, but do offer stuff to get the younger crowd interested. Show them they can do it too, and how much fun it can be.
You know, get a basic blinker kit, and go after the younger kids and get them in the store and get a solder party going. The kids walk out with a “blinky” and you get customers.
I’d hate to see RS go out of business, but not for the reasons you may think. Our economy NEEDS every business it can get. Like it or not, they provide jobs. I hate to see ANYbody go out of business.
After reading LOTS of posts here, it’s pretty clear that RS needs to A) pick some direction and go for it, and B) either stick with what they have (and lose it) or get a new customer base, because it looks like they have permanently lost almost everybody here.
I’ve been burned by RS from WAAY back, buying “Minimus Seven” speakers for my car, and blowing out a set a day until they manager finally said they’re not really rated at what they said they were. 30, 40 years ago.
But if they changed, and proved it, I’d still go in there and give them a chance. You guys saying you’d never go in there, absolutely no matter what, lighten up.
It’s not like you’re buying a car and getting stuck with a lemon, it’s a couple bucks worth of parts.
But I think the electronics hobbyist group is coming back thanks to shows like Mythbusters and the Lego’s and stuff like that. There’s a lot of kids that seem to be interested in it these days.
So what better way to “realign” than to shoot for that core group and try to expand on it.
+1 to this idea:
How about the ability to make PCBs in store from files that you can upload on the web? Like one hour photo labs. Now that would be awesome. They could also have lots of files on the net that you could pick out and have made for pickup. They could offer pre-designed kits that could be packaged in store on demand.
Also, more prototyping equipment, PCBs and cases of all shapes and sizes.
Tools and Cables at reasonable prices would sell.
They should also accept electronics for recycling. Best Buy is already using this to increase traffic.
There was a RadioShack near the University, and they were always out of EVERYTHING I needed.
There used to be a radioshack.com warehouse off Buford Hwy in Atlanta. I went there once a month, on average, and it was awesome. I would love to see a Best Buy sized version of the Shack again.
While I see some mentions of Maplin in the UK, here it is also devolving, with more consumer crap of the same ilk that Dixons, Curis & PC world has cheaper (yes cheaper than you Maplin), and less of the technical expertise or component selection. As more Maplin high street stores appear, I’ve noticed an inverse trend in staff knowledge. Most of them barely know what a resistor is, let alone a transistor and what one can be used for. Maplin need to save themselve from being regarded as to dumbed-down for the hobbyist, while still regarded as an expensive, geeky alternative to PC World/Dixons – being between two markets, and doing neither well is a rather pants place to be. AS it is right now, thehy are mostly only useful if I am in a bind, and RS/Farnell cannot supply me the part soon enough – its still fairly unlikely maplin still carry such parts though.
Guys, instead of commenting here, comment on their blog. They are much more likely to read that than this.
If Radio Shack wants to embrace the DIY crowd, one thing it could do is to add a DIY section to its website. Check out this link:
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Wifi-Extender-Cantenna-build-with-a-stand/
Radio Shack should hire a few people to come up with these kinds of projects and put them up on their website. Have different levels of projects from novice to expert. Of course, the projects would include parts lists, complete with Radio Shack part numbers for the components. Add a forum for people to discuss their projects and build up a community surrounding Radio Shack’s DIY projects.
Radio Shack was a great store for do it yourself people 30 years ago. You could build almost anything you wanted from their rich supply of components. Those days are long gone. The radio shack by me is terrible. These days Radio Shack is a mobile phone store that happens to have a drawer of electronic parts and not much else. I stopped going to Radio Shack years ago. It is true the markup is crazy on their parts. But, when you need that one part and a project is on hold…there is no price too high to have those strange parts close by. Problem of course is that it isn’t profitable to maintain a large stock of these things few people would ever use. I understand that. But at the same time the present retail model doesn’t differentiate it greatly from any ATT or Verizon store. And their sinking bottom line bears this out. It would be great for the store to return to their geek electronics roots. But I’m not holding my breath.
Radioshack can’t compete with Mouser or Newark or Digikey. I go there and generally get great customer service as opposed to Radioshack. I would encourage a partnership with WalMart to survive. Create a “radioshack aisle” since that is essentially what an entire store can fit in. Then you can leverage the foot traffic, their supply chain, and keep prices attractive so that people are willing to experiment. No one wants to take a chance on an electronics hobby when it is too costly to make mistakes. That is after all what “The Shack” is known for – hobbyists…
cheaper leds would be nice, 2 bucks for 2 leds, its better to salvage used or broken electronics for parts then to go to radio shack for parts
Here is the url to their blog for you to leave suggestions.
http://blog.radioshack.com/post/2011/05/19/RadioShack-And-The-DIY-Community-You-Talked-Were-Listening.aspx
1. Arduino stuff
2. More knowledgeable employees
3. Better variety and organization of existing parts. At my store (Electronics Supply Co.) we organize parts on racks in such a way that anyone can find any value of capacitor, resistor, or semiconductor.
I not very frequent DIY person, but i do have lot of stuff waiting for me to get knowledgeable enough to get them back to original working order,
ahem., ataris, z80’s etc, as mentioned by one of our friends here, the shelved compartments containing about 4 led’s, toggle switches, the odd acoustic sensor, has to go, they need to have bins of these and on sale, the only trip i make to RS is when i run out of solder, or if i could not find my roll in time. the first and foremost complain is the price. folks! should this section be renamed the rants section, mods with your kind permission of course
Radio Shithole is the worst place to get anything.
Everything they sell you can buy at walmart or some other store that sells like items fro 25 to 30 percent less than at the shack. Something that really pisses me off about the place besides the pandering to cell phone companies. is the lack of intelligence I keep finding there. Never have I been so insulted by people trying to tell me what I need because they think they know better. If I ever go in to the place I know why I am there I know what I am looking for and I don’t need some pimple faced teenager who knows dick about electronics to tell me what his store managers tell him to pitch instead of just letting me get what I want and staying the hell out of my way.
Sorry guys, your 20 years late. Radio Shack used to have the best Realistic speakers on the market. Great place to buy electronic stuff. Now I go in for a battery and they want my phone number. Talk about slipping into the gutter.
You all started slipping when you decided to do “Incredible Universe”. That was a joke and basically killed the company. You can thank John Roach for that brilliant decision. He basically did you in at that point. Same thing is about to happen to Microsoft with Ballmer.
And now, we can get everything at 10% of what you charge on the internet and I don’t have to give them my phone number. LOL, good luck to you.
I thought had worked on a business plan about doing this myself, however my current business is more than I can handle. My Idea involved going more into the service business. Without a doubt if you want to get back into the DIY business, your going to have to offer electronics training. I believe it is vital to America’s economy that we bring Science and Tech back to the US by re-introducing it to our children. How ever I could not see the DIY market as is, large enough in my area to support a pure retail store on it’s own. I imaging that’s why RS got to where it is today. My Idea, was to offer prototyping services. Kind of a Kinko’s for Part’s and electronic designers & Prototypers. To do this, I would equip the store with following equipment:
– Commercial rapid proto typer (3D Printer)
– DIY 3D Printer, such as MakerBot or REPRAP
– PCB etching, screen printing and CNC drilling machine/Vending Machine.
– SMD Solder Oven
The customers would be able to upload their projects via a website, and then receive an email/sms text when their project is ready to be picked up.
In addition to this, like previous poster’s have suggested, try and partner with some of the following:
– Make Magazine
– Spark fun
– Adafruit
– Maker Shed
– Seeed Studios
– Parallax.. and, and, and…
Carry DIY Books.
This is not going to be 6 month smash hit, it would take 1-2 years to develop the market, but it is do-able. We are an Aquarium and Pond store, and we built the Saltwater Aquarium market here, and are now working on the Pond market. BUT we also offer seminars and training sessions, free water testing and so forth.
Maybe partner with some retired old timers, and see if they don’t want to come down to the store and volunteer some time to answer people’s questions, and help troubleshoot projects.
This kind of setup, would not need a store on every corner. Our customers come from all over the state. We are a destination store. People want to come here and see what’s new.
Please ignore the ranter’s on here. Most of them don’t understand that if they want selection and good trained help, it takes markup. We carry lot’s of spare parts, to make up for the fact that they are slow moving item’s I HAVE to adjust my markup. To keep good employee’s, I have to pay accordingly, which means I have to adjust my markup. You want a nice clean, lit, cooled, and well stocked store, I have to adjust the markup accordingly.
To many thoughts to jot down here, would love to talk to you guy’s and get something going.
Now my Rant:
If we put half the amount of money that is spent in sports, into Science and technology in school’s, the US would not be in the situation it is today in regard’s to no longer being a technology and science leader. Sports in school is supposed to be P.E. – Physical Education that’s all.
All of you “former employees” are pretty much retards — No matter what employer you go to, if you don’t do what they ask, you’re going to get canned. That’s the whole point of being employed. People pay you to do the things they want you to do.
Jesus christ. I worked for the company for 11 years, and I sold the shit out of parts. I also sold more cell phones than anyone else in the state. I won every sales award the company had. Including in parts. I also won all but 2 of the company’s managerial awards (those 2 would only ever be won by the off-shore group).
It is possible, if you have at least half of a brain, to sell people what they come in for, and earn the ability to offer them other things, maybe things that they already want, maybe things you’re trying to sell in general. But you need to have a brain, and be trustworthy.
Stock all of the the Forrest M. Mims books and the components to make each project. Pick a microcontroller family and stock some of its processors in DIP packages. The Atmel AVR is a good choice because of its free Studio and free compiler, WinAVR. Host tutorials on your website teaching kids how to build radios, clocks, and microcontroller projects.
About all I look for at Radio Shack these days are LEDs and battery holders. There’s nothing else there.
FINAL SUGGESTIONS
keyword for assured success = differentiator
Nothing on the shelf should plug in and work when you pull it out of the box. K-Mart and others do that. Online does that.
Everything sold should have an element of mental stimulation. Assemble, plug together, think – do something.
Attract teens – to stimulate them into the hobby as a career. Halve the staff, give them brains.
Kits are a part of that, but components, trainers, test gear all has a place along with million other ideas. What surprises me is tha of that million-plus ideas, your management has identified perhaps 20 items that are actually in stock.
Price /is/ an issue, but not so important if you actaully have value with relevant, intereting stock to display and sell.
They are my store of last resort – EXCEPT, I am hooked on their 62/36/2 silver bearing solder for fine soldering.. The boards i build with that vs. regular 60/40 just look so much better..
They just need to make it in 1 pound rolls. 1.5 oz at a time is expensive..
I’d be all for them having a renaissance and becoming relevant again. I’ll have to watch and see for a while first, though.
What’s with all the UK’s Maplin management coming out of the woodwork to big up their stores. Ever tried to purchase components from their shops? They are just as big a joke in the UK as RadioShack/Tandy are elsewhere around the globe. They didn’t get their nickname “Craplin” for nothing.
Went to my local shop a few weeks back for a DIL socket. Nope. How about an NPN transistor? Nope. They sure did have a healthy supply of batteries though, nicely branded with the Maplin logo. This by the way is in London – a major city.
Money, money, money. That’s all these pluckers care about. Don’t waste your time with them man..
Well, the first thing that they could do is to bring back the printing of the commercial catalog. Hell, I’d even pay for a copy.
Pete
A few more things….
I have read a few misconceptions. Any business is in business to make money. People are not always happy about cost, but if the item is worth it, they will pay for it.
The model Radio Shack employs is not perfect, but it is apparently taking a paradign shift towards excellence. There will always be things offered to customers, they are promotions. If most people would actually listen to what is being offered, they would find that sometimes, these offers are really a very good deal. At least is what we offer in my store. If I have something that I plan on getting myself, I find it hard to not want to talk about it to my customers.
Also, I believe that it is going to take a new vision of what our stores will become to not stay relevant, but redefine relevance. If they were to get a handle on their cellular partnerships and advertising, pressure could be relaxed, manhours freed up for training, and a general raising of the bar of our associates.
I believe that the managers of the stores need to become more relevant as well. It is true customer base should define the Radio Shack in question. My store would thrive on robotics and the like, where others could just be cell phone kiosks. But someone needs to clear the way for this breaking of the cookie cutter mold. If we as managers all did things exactly the same way, it wouldnt work, and all but one of us would become unnecessary. This is why micro managment does not work in the retail corporate world in any efficient manner.
I feel like a bomb, waiting to explode, but never given the launch signal. If I was able to utilize 100% of my brain to not only sell to people, but to truly tailor my store environment to my steady, loyal customer base, I would spend all of my free time thinking up new ways to become a thread of my community fabric.
I have several ideas, but who is listening?
Thanks for the comments, it has been enlightening to read!
Incidentally, we have ONE RadioShack close by that still does (and will continue to, according to the owner/operator) carry electronic components and other necessary parts and tools. Only one left of it’s kind here anymore sadly.
Located on Harrison St, Batesville, Arkansas (Intersection of Harrison and 20th St) (for those Hack a Day readers who may be close by.)
The internet killed the DIY angle. Annone who needs components knows Newark and Digikey will sell hobbyist quantities of stuff. So don;t expect these guys to stock something you can get on the internet for $0.27
The world has changed and I would say not for the better, but such as it is.
I think that any of the online retailers would be open to dialogue on a partnership.
I often wondered why DigiKey or Mauser didnt stock our drawers…
Appeal to contractors.
Security, fire alarm, CATV, Automation, Access control.
I am not a hobbyist, which apparently was your target customer.
I am a Master Electrician, Fire Alarm technician, Data Comm technician, and Fiber Optic technician.
Used to be I’d come to Radio Shack for a myriad of different things.
Not any more, you have gutted what was useful to me.
Finishing a job could be held up for the want of a relay or resistor.
In Livonia, mi. there is a good electronics place named R.S. electronics. I go there now for these things.
Trouble is, they are only in 1 location and I’m sitting way across town at rush hour needing the part.
I suppose you’d say that resistors, relays and capacitors are low volume, low profit sales items.
I guess you’d be right, however it was the reason I came through the door.
It’d be cool if Radio Shack could become more like a hackerspace, stock tons of parts at a -decent- price. I can understand not selling resistors at $.05 a piece, But $.10 or $.15 I’d be willing to pay.
Stock IC chips, maybe just have popular ones in store, other non-popular ones in a warehouse ready to be shipped. Have a good selection of popular microcontrollers such as Arduino, AVR, PIC, Parallax, maybe even a couple of ARMs.
Have lots of decently priced electronics kits, clock, radio, robot, pir sensors….
Have lots of good books/magazines/whatever for electronic enthusiasts.
The first thing I ever really bought from radioshack was a Parallax Basic stamp kit (“What’s A Microcontroller?”) for $100 I think.
I personally don’t think that Radio Shack should sell SparkFun products, as it is SparkFun is kind of expensive, add in the overhead of running a brick and mortar store it’d be even more so.
I also don’t see Radio Shack selling custom PCBs or custom kits any time soon, from the sounds of it they are hurting ($$ wise), I don’t see them making much a profit from making a quality kit to put in their hundreds of stores…
As a few other people have asked, why shop at Radio Shack? You have Best Buy for TVs, Appliances, Phones… You have Phone stores for Phones, you have toy stores that sell better, cheaper toys. I just bought an LG Optimus V, I had a hard time finding a place that actually had one in stock so i called probably a dozen places, Radio Shack and Target where the only places, Radio Shack had the phone for $200, and Target had the phone for $150…
I don’t think “The Shack” will be around much longer unless they do something drastic.
1 – A 3d printer. Not for sale, but where I come in and give you a file (on a flashdrive) and you print out the object right there and sell it to me. Think about how much of a novelty this would be! Even non-DIYers would be amazed and want to use it.
2 – PCB etching kit
3 – LCDs that I can interface to on a breadboard.
btw, I think they’re reading suggestions from the YT video or something.
Hello,
I think RS is in a way doomed to failure. Here’s something I have seen a LOT of lately. Any time you create a store that has anything related to DIY, or anything that looks like ‘parts’, ‘wires’, etc., some dumbass sheep-like ‘comsumer’ will walk in and want a cell phone or iPad, and when that ‘ahem’ consumer sees your ‘parts’ section, they will get scared and start wondering if people build bombs at your store, and say crap like “Well, you shouldn’t be selling this kind of merchandice. You never know what it might be used for, and you can never be too careful in today’s ‘climate”. And all of a sudden, the cops get a phone call. And how many times would someone carrying wires and ‘parts’ be seen by some busybody sheep and be accued of trying to build a bomb? It’s happened. I’ve read about it in the news. Again, you CAN NEVER be TOO careful these days…
In other words, it’s more of a pattern I have seen especially lately. People want warm and fuzzy feelings f their iPads and cell phones and their facebook and twitter and texting accounts to all work perfectly and without any kind of problems. YES these same people think it’s that someone has to, well, y’know, actually REPAIR these things. I know I am sounding crazy, but as a computer programmer and DIY’er, I have seen this coming more and more. Family members and others sometimes ask for impossible tasks to be done NOW, and when they do things like 1) call every half an hour for days and days straight, 2) come and spend the day ‘to see how the is going, 3) bitch and complain because I am , etc., I tell them to please let me actually do the work for them. They consider it ‘gross’ that things have to be taken apart or the insides of things looked at and fixed. I have seen the reactions that the sheep take to seeing actual ‘parts’ being sold ‘in public’, and I just shake my head in shame. I REALLY want Radio shack to get back what it once had, and here are a few ways they can try to do this:
1) Today, some parts should be able to be manufactured on demand, like books on demand, maybe using 3D printers (may be near-future, let’s see). If this works, have a lot of parts in maybe one store for an area.
2) Sponsor free or low-cost classes in everything from simple electronics to soldering to computer repair to getting your Microsoft Certification. Yes, open a complete school and charge a little less for the classes, for the hardcore stuff.
3) Do like what the Lego stores do. They sell tons and tons of Legos and they don’t sell cell phones or crap monster cables.
4) Create a community around doing it yourself and adventures in learning. and do more than the old stuff (Please, sell the old-school kits as well, but expand it to modern stuff at the same time). I would Love to build a model robot myself, from the motors and gears, radio / usb contorl, etc. Have fairs and contests, website(s) for ordering lower-stock items that would not sell well in stores, etc.
And, just about EVERY suggestion above, please follow. Radio shack, Please Take Note of what everyone else here says.
And, hire sales people, train them well, keep them up to date while having them still know old-school stuff, give them degrees, and PAY THEM what they are worth. Have being a sales person be a viable career someone can do with pride, for example. And this should include females as well as males. a few times I have seen very capable females who knew their sh_t forwards and backwards (It’s not necessary for one person to know or memorize everything, but to be nice people and know their stuff), and them would solder things for me when I could not, and then explain how it all worked to boot. and since they were just great people to chat and get help with alike, that is worth its weight in gold. Please stop the ‘marketing’ bullshit. Please let good people do their good work, and you will rake in the dough. People will come to your stores for any, or no reason at all, and buy something just for the hell of it. Now THATis good marketing. Have videos on the web sites that explain basic science, have sales people also double as teacher of classes, so suddenly someone behind the counter was your teacher and that’s how you think of that person, and of sales people at your stores in general.
Do I sound totally nuts or what?
Sorry for the long rant. We need to make education, creativity, science, etc., popular again. And yes, I do play a LOT of video and computer games, and I am VERY creative and technical all at the same time.
justmy $.02