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.
I live close to big electronics stores and I buy all that stuff online.