Heartbroken to see they’re in financial distress. If there’s any store worth saving it’s this one.
Like you said, so many motors and switches; likely a big part of the reason I do what I do for a living today.
saveitforparts on YouTube did an excellent tour/example video of ax-man [1] which gives a good idea of the type of store ASS is and the vibe. Even if you aren't local to the upper Midwest, I'd highly recommend donating to keep this store alive. It very much fits with the old-school hacker ethos, and keeping spaces like this alive helps preserve that culture and exposes younger people to the idea of DIY/punk/hacker and the ability to repurpose old/interesting stuff.
Side note, I'm surprised that these types of scientific surplus stores have lasted longer in the upper Midwest than places like silicon valley or near bell labs in NJ. They aren't open for retail anymore and didn't have the same sense of humor, but Surplus Sales of Nebraska [2] is also an excellent example from this area of the country. I hadn't ordered since last year, they had held on to a delightful web 1.0 site up until sometime in the last year and are a legit supplier for really oddball stuff.
[0] https://www.ax-man.com/pages/the-nature-of-surplus
A core memory from back then is the big diver’s helmet way in the back at ASS, and wishing I could buy the weird radar screen/oscilloscope boxes that looked like they came right out of a tank. And how every label for every box of parts or object in the whole store had funny hand lettered descriptions that someone spent a lot of time on.
Real estate prices are a big factor. Rents in silicon valley, and I suspect NJ have increased much more than midwest rents. Even if the store location is owned, when the business owners are looking to retire, it's then a question of selling the business with the space or closing the business and selling the space by itself, and the value of the space is probably enough that it doesn't make sense to tie it to a business.
Add a bit of reality that manufacturing and the surplus it generates has mostly left silicon valley and NJ, and it makes more sense to have such a business elsewhere.