RadioShack’s new owner plots old comeback strategy
retailwire.com
retailwire.com
>Items will include “more end products than the stores have typically sold, focusing more on cellphone products, headphones, batteries and adapters, for instance.”
I don't see this as a winning strategy. I can buy any of these items at a number of convenient locations, like Amazon, Target, Best Buy, and Walmart. Why would I choose RadioShack, especially when I don't have faith in their ability to price competitively?
I will go to a RadioShack when I can get things there that I can't get quickly elsewhere.
Moreover, that's just doubling down on the same business strategy that already ran the company into the ground. I can't imagine it's going to work any better this time.
RadioShack's advantages, where it had them, were in its convenience and its ergonomics. Get in, get what you want, browse a couple of human-scale shelves, pick up some batteries, and get out zippity-zap. Try doing that at Target.
There are usually batteries at the checkout stands, though.
Get in, buy a low-end GPU, or an SSD, or whatever random PC component I don't want to wait a week for, play with the XBox and Macs, check out and go home
I wonder if most of their storefronts are leased or outright carried on their books (shades of McDonald’s strategy). If they own the dirt most of their storefronts sit upon (they have someone in corporate who manages real estate, but I can’t tell if that is just overseeing corporate property like distribution centers and offices or they pulled a McDonald’s), in some circles the real estate play is the asset and anything else is cash flow to keep the lights on.
Can't you find those at places like Mouser? I thought there were better options for everything than at Radio Shack before they went under.
They also had stuff for other hobbies like RC cars which Mouser doesn’t really cater to.
Mouser also has a sea of crap I have to wade through.
In fact, they used to be right in the center of that! RadioShack was the maker movement back when makers were really into amateur radio and CB. Then they branched out into home computers (TRS-80, Tandy PC clones, etc). Then someone had the bright idea to completely divest themselves of their computer lineup[0] and just sell mobile phone service plans and satellite TV subscriptions... which nobody bothered with, resulting in the company becoming a zombie.
Had RadioShack stayed with the original hobbyist user base they courted (and somehow remained profitable) they'd absolutely be selling microcontrollers, 3D printers, and PC parts. Actually, that's just a Micro Center. The only thing is that Micro Center doesn't fit in the tiny store footprints that most RadioShack locations had. So... I mean, Micro Center isn't in a lot of states, so if they wanted to literally just clone Micro Center but with the Radio Shack branding I feel like there's places they could do that.
[0] Tandy was sold to AST who was then bought up by Samsung and then shuttered when Asian stock markets collapsed in the mid-90s. 8-Bit Guy talks about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hdazA-VUf0
I wonder if their franchise model stymied the format-- they could hardly tell the franchisee who had rented out a standard mall location that he needed to quadruple his footprint.
What's funny is that they were like 1km from a more conventional electronics-parts shop, a little run-down outfit with no marketing budget or retail presence, buried behind a rail yard, and that company's still in business today (albeit at a slightly nicer location).
I don't think so, maybe they could do well with local stores though. It seems weird to me though...
In the 80s, small towns of even 5000 people might have a radio shack. And more than 1/2 the store was parts and electronic supplies.
I can't think of who would buy from them, even though I did. Was it local appliance repair people? What made them profitable back then, in such small towns??
It may be hard to compete with amazon and digikey, for that part of their business.
But back to your thing, maker and right to repair, I think they might be OK in higher density population areas?
I don't think the dust has settled, amazon is sort of flailing about, has endless issues, and 5 years from now, direct Chinese sellers at Amazon could vanish.
What then?
So much change, so fast.
Yeah, it is the shipping that is killer. You are doing some hobby project and find you need a capacitor or resistor that you don't have, and then you either order just what you need and pay 10x on shipping, or order a whole bunch of them hoping that someday you'll need them, or you find other things you also need or might need someday to add to your order.
It's particularly annoying when I just want a few cheap parts that are all thin, weigh practically nothing, and are not fragile. Why can't Mouser or DigiKey just toss them into an envelope, put a first class stamp on it, and mail it? I'd be willing to accept the risk and eat the loss if somehow the post office manages to break my resistors or capacitors.
What I've done for resistors and capacitors is order some kits that contains a bunch of them. I got a resister kit that has 860 resistors (10 each of the E12 values from 0 to 10M ohm), and a capacitor kit that has 645 capacitors that has a range of ceramic and electrolytic capacitors, with 30 each of the most common values and 10 each of the less common values.
I've also got a 600 transistor kit (15 common types, 40 each), and a 220 piece inductor kit (22 values, 10 each).
The particular kits I bought aren't available anymore, but as an example here's a currently available 1280 piece resistor kit for $11 [1].
The kits will probably have all the resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transistors I'll need for a while, and if I do end up using all of a particular value from one of the kits I'll then also know that is a value that is worth stocking up on.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Resistor-Assorted-Resistors-Assortmen...
I live close to big electronics stores and I buy all that stuff online.
i spent my teen years studying and selecting electronic components from radio shack.
Austin, of all places, really could use a Microcenter. I'm suprised they haven't put one there given they have them in Houston and Dallas.
(Sorry, this comment doesn't add anything, but it was too synchronistic to not point out)
So it was the same problem as RadioShack; anyone who knew what they were doing would plan out a project and order what they needed online to save a considerable amount. What you’d buy would be if you forgot or broke something and needed to grab something asap and didn’t want to wait. That didn’t justify the space I suppose so they kept shrinking it down
What was really annoying was the stuff that would really be handy would be like small packs of passives. Like when I went to akihabara in Japan there was a market that sold small packet of things like resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc. in little baggies for few yen. And when I went to shenzen it was even better, you could get basically anything, smd or throughhole, in any quantity, but that’s kind of cheating ha. Micro center didn’t do this at any point I lived near it. They would only sell the big assortments so if you just needed a 100ohm resistor for an arduino project you had to spend $20 to buy 300 assorted through holes. Frustrating and pricey so id rather just go online and spend less to get a better and broader assortment.
Maybe if we actually do some real right to repair there might be some demand to justify but as is I think it’s just one of those niches that cannot compete with the internet and warehouse/logistic companies like digikey and mouser. There’s just too many skus
This isn't limited to just this Fry's, either. I went to the one in Anaheim and it was also a bad time.
I would kill for a Microcenter to go in there. (I'm in Austin and it seems like we'd have plenty of the target market.)
I miss RadioShack, and especially Frys when they were in their prime.
Radio Shack would be best as a board-level hobbyist group: selling Teensy, Arduino, Beaglebones, Rasp. Pi... as well as wires and common components.
A few wires, a standard board like Arduino, and some I2C or SPI components will be enough for most hobbyists, and "looks" far easier than a breadboard or PCB.
Wholesale mfgs will always be cheaper, but there is something to be said for a one-stop shop experience. I don't have to spend time learning websites or which tools they accept, I can just go to the store to get my idea built.
Different projects will have different reasons for choosing transistors: maybe response time is maximally important. Maybe they're using the transistor in "linear" mode and would rather have a wide and consistent ohmic region. Maybe its a high-power application where breakdown voltage is most important. Maybe it needs to be ruggedized and they'll prefer protection diodes.
This is _JUST_ transistors. Every other part basically has this similar problem.
There's just too many important decisions per part. As such, modern nmos-transistor catalogs number in the thousands of parts in practice. The only way you get the right transistor is through online ordering through megastores (like Digikey) who can keep stock of all the hundreds-of-thousands of SKUs + have an online searchable database to help you find what you're looking for.
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So where Radio Shack could feasibly work... is by:
1. Shrinking the catalog down to "standard" generic parts that have wide applicability to many different projects. "Jack of all Trade" transistors, that aren't the best in any particular category but instead have nice behaviors across a large set of axis. This is just for a "keep in stock" perspective, for anyone who wants to "make an electronics project today" without waiting for the 5 to 10 days for typical shipping times for custom PCBs.
#1 means that Radio Shack (or other stores) can swap between transistors from different manufacturers as they come into (or out of) stock, or based on supply/demand. (Buying up excess stock from a factory on the cheap), etc. etc. But still organizing these parts to match various SKUs that match particular use-cases (ex: 3.3V logic NMOS).
2. Focus on physical attributes which benefit to coming into the store. Ex: Serving as a central point for expensive tool rental. An OEM-set of crimpers, for example the Harwin M20 series of Dupoint / Mini-PV clone connectors, has a $570 crimper. That's cheap for a store to hold in stock/rental, but a bit expensive for hobbyists.
Electronics in practice have _LOTS_ of $500+ tools (crimpers, 3d printers, laser cutters, etc. etc.) that really would benefit from rental-models. Furthermore, the tool usage scales well with wire usage in practice. (Ex: bulk ethernet cable is way cheaper than individual ethernet wires. If hypothetical-Radio Shack buys 10,000 ft. spools and has the nice $500 to $1000 crimpers to make your own wire in store, that's a good reason to come in)
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With 4-layer boards so cheap in practice through online ordering, I really don't think "Hypothetical Radio Shack" can compete with that.
But give me a place to consolidate custom wire lengths + rental of those expensive crimpers, and we probably have a deal.
I really wish wire wrap was still common. Wire wrap was actually more durable and reliable than PCBs, and for a lot of hobby projects would be easier and faster than designing a PCB and having it made. I wonder if there is a big enough hobbyist market for a wire wrap revival?
> I really wish wire wrap was still common. Wire wrap was actually more durable and reliable than PCBs, and for a lot of hobby projects would be easier and faster than designing a PCB and having it made. I wonder if there is a big enough hobbyist market for a wire wrap revival?
Wire wrap's main problem is that the wire-wrap sockets needed to make good, reliable contacts, are on the order of $1 each, so if you need to put like 5 chips on a board, you're well into "Might as well make a full custom 4-layer PCB", especially when you consider that SMT parts are so much more common these days.
But if you wanna talk Wire Wrap...
https://www.peconnectors.com/wire-wrap-sockets-and-headers/
https://www.vectorelect.com/terminals-wire-wrap.html
I know how to do that for sure. But... with PCBs so incredibly cheap these days, why bother? Its not like the $150+ days for a PCB, where $1 per socket, $10 wire-wrap boards and $0.10 per pin wire-wrap terminals were much cheaper than PCBs.
Today, its probably cheaper to order a PCB (even 3x copies) for $20 or whatever, and then throw away the other 2 copies, rather than getting into wire-wrap. The main benefit of wire-wrap is that if you've got a large collection of PCB parts + wire-wrap sockets, you can design and build a board today without waiting on stuff. But I wouldn't consider the wire-wrap way to be much cheaper.
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SMT for the most part has taken over through-hole in general (including wire-wrap). There's SMT-to-through hole stock boards you can keep, but I feel like learning KiCAD and just spending the $20 each time you wanna make a proper SMT board is the better idea.
The only exception is that through-hole can be built with stock parts in a "prestocked lab". If you want a "resistor book", a through-hole set of resistors + pre-made breadboard proto-boards is a good tool (especially if you have transistors, LEDs, Diodes, voltage regulators, and OpAmps).
You can solve a lot of problems by just combining simple things in a lab in half-an-hour... and then a few wires here and there to connect your doo-hicky to an Arduino or something is useful. Through hole remains a useful tool, although it'd be expensive to stock enough parts (resistor book, capacitor book, some trim-pots, LEDs, voltage regulators of various kinds, a few microcontrollers, breadboards, crimpers, connectors, etc. etc.) to get to this point.
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Anyway, I think the through-hole community has largely settled upon two kinds of boards:
1. "Xacto-knife" boards, like Vectorbord 8019 (https://www.vectorelect.com/8019-1.html), where you're supposed to cut the traces that are too long and make them into individual lines as needed.
2. "Pad-per-hole" boards, like Vectorbord 8003 (https://www.vectorelect.com/8003.html), where you'its intended for you to spill solder between lines that should be connected.
These two techniques are pretty good, but you still need to create wires between points in practice. Wirewrap can serve the job. And arguably, solder+wire is generally considered a bad idea (the solder can internally break before the more flexible copper breaks, so you end up making a less reliable connection than what's possible with wire-wrap)
But you'll find that the amount of opportunity to use wirewrap is still small per project, and it should be "just one technique" for making connections, not the main technique above all else. Soldering is probably the closest you have to a "bread and butter" skill that's used everywhere.
I agree, and even wonder what's up with bed bath and beyond's implosion. Many people, mostly but not only! women, tend to really really care what pillows look and feel like.
I think the only reason Amazon works here, is the crazy free return shipping.
But still, how is that the same?? I don't care about pillows, but I know if I did, I'd want to choose! To touch! To see how fluffy, how they look..
Hrm. Maybe I am harbouring an unknown pillow fetish.
Anyway, I don't get it either. If Michael's can't survive, can anything?
Michael’s survives by having way more art supplies than other places and people who do art wanting it NOW and not later.
Most people need in-person, tech customer support--especially in small towns. Radio Shack could find a nice niche by being that.
The problem is that while it could be profitable, it won't be a "growth industry". And that seems to be a gigantic problem given the MBA management mindset in the US.
Support doesn't scale. It's weakly profitable. It's specific to an area. It's slow. It requires workers with a bit of clue.
Support is everything that modern business culture loathes.
support doesn't scale, or work at all as a business, if you aren't charging for it. if you're providing free support as a loss leader to get people to buy your stuff, people will take the free support and leave. it's nothing to do with scale.
I don’t but these all at once in a single trip, I go there 3 or 4 times a week as I find I need them and forgot to purchase them at the grocery store a good trip away. That’s what a DG operates on, those daily needs close by. Closer than a Wal-Mart or an Ingles would ever get.
Maybe the next best analogy for what a Radio Shack could be is like an Ace Hardware. The small town Aces are often better than anything I’ve seen in the city competing with a Lowe’s and Home Depot. However, I have a hard time seeing the volume to work. If I’m on a project getting that extra tube of caulk and backer rod or can of primer paint an Ace is great and closer than the Big Town Box Store 25 minutes away so they win my routine business and the routine business of folks nearby be they DIY or professional.
I just have a hard time seeing enough consumer electronics use that it would matter. The most routine thing would be a cell-phone and for most that really means driving to the ATT store to see what my upgrade elegibity looks like this season.
Probably some sound advice for the new owners hidden in there.
I don't see much value in the brand anymore. The only pivot I could see is switching to an online only store, but even then you're competing against the entire internet for selling commodity parts. This does not seem like the most profitable use of money for investors. It's ok to let it die.
Micro Center stopped carrying the ASRock X300 Desk Mini for any Ryzen 5000G(Socket Packaged) based desktop APU builds, and a very DIY friendly build that was good for there.
And AMD has stopped releasing G series Socket Packaged desktop APUs as there was no Ryzen 6000G or Ryzen 7000G Desktop APUs released! And so that's not good for any DIY Friendly Small Form Factor system builds like the InWin Chopin that can accommodate a Mini-ITX MB but the Chopin lacks the room for any dGPU to fit into the MB's PCIe slot, so small is that InWin Chopin's form factor. So Desktop APUs/SOCs with powerful iGPUs were what the InWin Chopin was designed in mind for there.
AMD's looking more toward OEMs and BGA Packaged APUs only there as some of the Radeon 7040HS series Mobile/BGA packaged APUs in Minisforum and BeeLink systems have been allotted up to 70W cTDPs on those supposedly "Mobile" BGA Packaged processors and that's more processor wattage than Ryzen 5000G(65W) was allotted.
But if one goes into any Micro Center their selection of Mini Desktop PCs and and Very Small form factor cases and low profile fans is just awful there. So I'd like a store that wold specialize in small form factor PCs and cases and low profile cooling solutions. And I'm more of a Bare Bones Mini desktop PC end user and I do hope that eventually AMD will offer some newer Socket Package APUs in the future for DIY friendly builds. Micro Center used to carry the InWin Chopin as well but they have since stopped carrying that.
So give me a Radio-Shack like entity that specializes in Very Small Form Factor Desktop PC systems and even Handheld Gaming devices like the Steam Deck and AyaNeo/Other gaming handhelds and all the accessories and do it yourself upgrade kits there.
Their differentiation would be a focus on small, hobbyist quantities, high speed Amazon shipping, and a very well organized website where you can quickly find the component you need without hours of searching.
For extra credit they could add in a special order section: write in what you are looking for and they give you a price including shipping.
Most of the big sites Digikey, Mouser, etc are focused on large quantities. They would be competing with Adafruit, but I think there's room for more than one company here.
> “We will continue to offer a robust innovative product portfolio that makes the life of our customers easier, along with an extensive benefit program that adds value to every purchase,” Unicomer’s Siman said in a statement. “Our challenge is to continue innovating in both directions and remain on our customers’ top of mind.”
This really doesn’t sound like it’s going to end well.