On February 5, 2015 at 2:37:54 PM, Ian S. King (isking at
uw.edu) wrote:
RadioShack should have brought back the store of the 1980s and updated it items like cheap
cables, Raspberry Pi kits, etc. I.E. hobbyist and do it yourself stuff.?
A few of the stores around here actually do carry that kind of stuff as well as
transistors and resistors and a number of other stuff that, today, people might say falls
under the ?Maker? style.?
Maybe they weren?t committed enough?
Having been born in 1970, I don?t recall much about the pre-Big Box Store days. I remember
a few independent Big-Box-Stores like Sound Trek in Metairie, LA, but mostly I remember
reading about the bigger stores pretty early on. Did RS just try to be Best Buy but in a
smaller more distributed way??
When I lived in the Boston area, I did a lot of roam-around tech support and it was so
worth it to go to a place in Needham, MA called You-Do-It Electronics which seems a lot
like what RS used to be. They cater to hobbyist and industry and I honestly couldn?t begin
to count how many times I went there.?
Maybe if RS had been able to stick to its roots, it could have been a nationwide YDI.
Cheers,
m