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Comment by jgh | Hacker News Reader

On the topic of toy stores / toy store innovation, that American Girl doll store is insane. My wife and I went there to buy a doll for our friend's daughter for Christmas and holy hell is that place busy / kinda weird. It's like a Bloomingdale's or something for dolls. Kids can even sign up for "doll spas" and bring their dolls in to have their hair and nails done and stuff. Obviously I don't really get it because I'm not an 8 year old girl, nor do I have any kids but that place must be making a ton of money.

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This is part of the reason that IMO a lot of retail is failing ... customers don't want or need a static display of inventory; they can easily get that from their already-installed Amazon app. Retail needs to evolve to be an event destination ... a place that gives the consumer a _reason_ to get out of the house and go there. A place where they can experience something other than just simple consumption.

Obviously, not every single storefront needs to be that (grocery stores come to mind) ... but for the average mall, no one wants to actually go there and walk around any more. The mall needs to be a place that entices people to go there and simply exist ... do stuff, hang out with people, even if they spend no money at all.

Radio Shack should have tried to evolve into maker spaces rather than cell phone stores.

The number of times I was working on an electronics product and went to Radio Shack to try to find a quick replacement for the resistor or motor I just fried is crazy... and the crazier part is they never once had the part I needed yet I kept coming back because it's the only store I could think of that might have it.

Arduino and Rapsberry Pi should have been their saving grace. Not cheap RC cars.

I agree, but they were out of the parts business well before Arduino and Raspberry Pi were a thing. The last Radio Shack in my area that stocked resistors closed in 2006. There's none near me now, but since ~2000 they'd been mostly phone stores that also carried the occasional batteries and cables.

They had gotten kinda back into the parts business within the last ~5 years or so? At least the ones near me did. They were starting to embrace the maker movement, and was at least dedicating some space to them.

Radioshack in the 1980s/90s was like the original maker space. I bought so many circuit boards and magnets and batteries there. Their staff all knew their stuff too.

They kind of did at the very end. They were at least dedicating some space to it, but I think it was too little too late.

yep, my local radio shack, in the end, started to start stocking some interesting stuff ... and they had a series of drawers that had a variety of resistors, leds, and other such things that you could pick through. But as you said, too little too late. They could have taken the lead on the maker movement, given that they had the infrastructure in place ... but despite them having this stuff, the workers knew little to nothing anytime I asked them a question, they were just there to take the money at POS and restock the shelves :(

I had so hoped that at one point Fry's would buy out all the Radio Shack locations and make them out to be Frontier Fry's Locations that was more tuned to hyper local Maker Scenes.

FWIW American Girl is owned by Mattel and Mattel is not doing well at all, in large part because American Girl is dying.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mattel-shares-plunge-as-no...

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