Radio Shack to start stocking Arduino, Other Goodies

I remember watching my local Radio Shack turn into just another commodity electronics shop, and not a very good one, at that. By the end, it was just a place I would go if I wanted to be harassed about buying a cell phone (i.e. never).

If Radio Shack has gotten rid of the high pressure cell phone sales people, started hiring nerds again, and started stocking the kind of things I need when I want to finish a project but don't want to schlep out to Fry's or wait for an order from Amazon for, I might return. But, it's been a long time since I've been to a Radio Shack, and I rarely think of them as the place I should go for anything, since they trained me out of that habit.

I have to admit that carrying Arduino and other assorted tinkerers toys does make me think maybe the company at least has some of its old spirit. I guess we'll have to see what comes of it. Next time I pass one, I'll probably take a stroll around...I'll know whether they've gotten good again by whether I walk out empty handed or not.

This is exactly what RS needs to do. Go back to their roots. I was bitterly disappointed a few months ago when I needed a breadboard and a few basic components and RS didn't have half of them. I ended up going to a store in Denver that strips old electronics and sells the components.

There are tons of electronics geeks still around from Arduino builders to car audiophiles building custom circuits to the RC crowd - and no one serves them. Right now half RS's inventory is available at Best Buy, Walmart and every other store with an electronics department. There's a very profitable niche waiting for them if they're willing to do what they do best.

Employing a few guys who know what they're doing would help too. The local ham radio club and computer and electronics engineering faculties would be a good place to start recruiting.

They're really looking to make stronger ties with the "maker" community, and are ramping up their DIY cred by hiring Meredith Scheff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpZ7FyjGkGk (of NorthSkirt fame http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UktOOIK_6nU) at Noisebridge, and Ed Lewis at Instructables http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxRqGOSHbUg to do ads.

I had heard something like this a few weeks back--that Radio Shack is going to start stocking more components again. Discussing it with my co-workers, we decided they probably can't make as much on the old business model any more. Every time I've been, they try to sell me a cell phone, but there are cell phone stores in every town already. Everything they sell is available at Best Buy for comparable prices (with better selection), or on Amazon for far cheaper.

I look forward to a day when perhaps Radio Shack will sell kits and electronic components... even if it's more expensive than Digikey. There aren't really any nationwide brick-and-mortar electronics stores, but there are plenty of consumer electronics + cell phone stores... I'd love to see Radio Shack making money with a new business model.

It's great that Radio Shack is reaching out to the community and trying to stock more DIY items, however I'm not sure if it's going to work out for them.

DIY is a small subset of the population and a smart one. They're going to buy this stuff online, whether Radio Shack stocks it or not.

I read a AMA from a McD exec who said people are always complaining about them needing more healthy choices. Well, whenever they add them, no one buys them. The people who want that stuff aren't going to eat at McDonalds anyway, so why waste inventory space.

So, sure, i'd love to be able to be able to get in my car and get an arduino board and some servos, but I'm not sure if that one one trip a year or two from me is worth it.

Good first step for them. Next:

- Price cables and connectors at only a slight markup from monoprice levels (cover the overhead costs, but basically sell without any profit margin)

- Stock every single high traffic component possible at just slightly higher markup than digitech

- Sell components for custom PC builds (a la Fry's, CPUs, RAM etc.), charge slightly less than Fry's, slightly more than newegg, etc., but only stock components that are highly recommended by Tom's Hardware and other respected build guides. Have employees build machines with these parts and know what will go wrong, advise customers accordingly.

So where do the big profits come from?

Service contracts.

Give free support to walk-ins, one time only, charge on subsequent support requests. Become a non-ripoff/know-nothing version of geek squad.

The only knowledge I have of Radio Shack is when I went in and found the tinest of commodities - things like single LEDs and audio connectors and flashlights - to be priced so high it was almost unreal.

Is this still true of the place? Or did I go during a bad period in their history?

Totally serious question: how is Radio Shack still in business?

I would love to see them go back to basics, with drawers upon drawers of components and wires and stuff. Seems like nobody likes doing that stuff on their own nowadays.

I hope this works for them, I've been getting into Arduino and other electronics lately and would be nice to have a local place to pick stuff at the last minute. I went into our local shack a few months ago to pick up a piezo transducer to use as a pickup in a cigar box guitar I was making with the kids. It was dead when we got there, so all of the salesmen descended on me asking if I needed help. So I said I needed a piezo transducer, and they all looked at me like I had 3 heads. "Do you mean a transistor?" :) I asked them to just show me where the transistors were and I'd take a look around. Sure enough down in one of the bottom drawers of components was a label "Piezo Transducer" - bingo! As I checked out a few minutes later the manager was in awe that he had such a thing in his store. Surprisingly the same store actually had a decent (though small) selection of other supplies (hookup wire, breadboards, blank circuit boards, etc).

I arrived in the US in 1998. Prior to that, I remember reading good things about Radio Shack. When I finally found a branch, I browsed inside to see what the big deal was. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I remember leaving very disappointed. It seemed to be all custom gadgets (PDAs, RCs, etc), cellphones, and expensive batteries. Reading comments here of what Radio Shack used to be at least clarifies why it got good buzz in the past.

I am a ham and as a kid I used to visit the local Radio Shack weekly. For a while they even stocked ham radios. I haven't been in one for over ten years.

I just attended an all day Arduino workshop a few weeks back and it was a blast. Talking afterwards it seemed everyones number one request was to get a local vendor to stock some of the more common Arduino parts. I sure hope Radio Shack is listening.

That's awesome! I remember 20 years ago radio shack was amazing for me as a child hobbyist. Now I only go there for obscure sized batteries (so once every 2 years). Let's hope they can revive the original spirit.

I wonder if Radio Shack is going to implement a DIY education system or something. I don't know how to build stuff with Arduino but if they had a little kiosk that showed how you could set up and program a hello world (led blinking) in Arduino I'm sure it could interest some people who had no idea what Arduino is.

Just to quibble: Radio Shack have only acted on two of those points, and not the top Arduino point. They say we’re actively working on every single one of these, but that might not actually mean they will stock Arduinos in their regular stores.

While great news for those who can go to RadioShack, I'm somewhat disappointed that where I live, Vancouver, Canada, Radio Shack's have been replaced by "The Source". NOt that I was really a fan of what Radio Shack had become, but I've got good memories of Radio Shack from it being the only electronics store as I grew up in a smaller town. If Radio Shack is really trying to offer hobbyists more, than it's too bad that their retails stores are no longer open up here. [Checked Wikipedia, CircuitCity owned RadioShack, changed the name to "The Source", then sold off the Canadian operations as part of bankruptcy proceedings.]

Oh man... it would make Radio Shack awesome again. I might actually visit one of those stores on the way home. The parts might be more expensive, but if it saves me a trip to China, I'd do it.

Does this mean that Radio Shack will stock the Android Open Accessory Kit? Because I've been looking all around the net and I can't find a site I trust that carries all the boards.

They don't seem to have the store space for all these things unless other things are going to go. Is this just in the catalog?

Now, they could bring back the TRS-80 name with a line of non-PC-compatible computers ;-)

Will they continue trying to sell me batteries and cell phones with simple overpriced electronics components?

Finally, a reason to go to Radio Shack

I wonder if there exists a chance they will notice their current downward trend, look back at their heyday, and do an about-face?

I go to Radio Shack several times per year. I would be absolutely thrilled if they would just pay attention to what's in their parts bins and actually keep them stocked.

The last time I bought something at Radio Shack (probably a battery), they asked me for my phone number, then made an issue out of it when I would not give it.

I haven't been back.

Here's my anecdote about the decline of Radio Shack:

I went there to get a USB cable the other day. The only normal male-male USB cable they were stocking had gold-plated ends (for reasons unknown), a big non-standard bulge in the connector at one end, and a ludicrously grandiose package, festooned with details about how this was a USB "transfer" cable, specially designed to transfer data between Windows computers.

For this reason, apparently, it was necessary to price it at $40. That's forty dollars. For a USB cable.

I laughed in the clerk's face while he was explaining to me about the "transfer cable" nonsense, told him he just lost a customer forever, and left.