6 Feb
2015
6 Feb
'15
11:23 a.m.
You are so absolutely right, you should have been their marketing director
and they'd still be around. People still like to build things just the same!
They completely missed the Maker movement, the computer mod stuff, the
switch to the web. Also too many stores, too small. The stuff they had in
there lately was an appalling mish-mash of uninteresting random stuff. No
need to read the news, you could so clearly see that the company management
was so totally lost and aimless by just visiting a store.
Here in the Valley, Fry's Electronics took over, and then made it so much
better. Fry's is where you stop at lunch time, for amateur or professional
stuff alike, and get an instant replacement for your fried LM7805. It also
keeps our company electronics lab and fab and IT alive. And you can get an
espresso at the same time, and a pack of sugar loaded cookies if you are a
late night programmer. And a concert on a full size Steinway while you are
picking up your capacitor. Let's not forget the best of it, being chased
around by the totally incompetent sales person that will convince you that
SATA and USB are one and the same thing. Trying to lose him by walking
progressively faster. Man, they can walk fast too, these are trained
professionals. And for the grand finale, being stripped searched going out
the door. How is that for the ultimate nerd store experience!
Love it all. The Fry brothers are geniuses.
Marc
fahimi wrote:
RadioShack had it essentially right in the 2014 Super Bowl commercial - the
80s
called and they did want their store back. What they screwed up was
thinking that meant >the old store had to go and be replaced with the
current monstrosity.
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. Yes, they >still would have to close a number of locations
(do you really need a ratshack on every corner?) but what would have been
left behind would have thrived...
6 Feb
6 Feb
11:43 a.m.
On 2/6/2015 11:23 AM, Marc Verdiell wrote:
They completely missed the Maker movement, the
computer mod stuff, the
switch to the web.
All of the stores I've visited have a lot of arduino and
other kit. I
would say they have as much as a brick and mortar store can have.
With the financial distress they've been in they don't seem to have
forced the pricing that other distributors have, but they do have all of
it, and there are (were) 4 stores within 2 or so mile of my house which
have arduino's, raspberry pi and other things on the hook.
They probably were not getting into the maker groups because they didn't
advertise. The maker people are not those who have been doing much
going to Radio Shack for anything, and if RS had any presence there, I
didn't see it. I only discovered the stocking of some kits when i went
to clean out my inventory of gift cards, and other such at the end of
last year with the pending bankruptcy filing.
Also Microcenter has a lot of the same, though their stock seems
spotty. I can buy things one week then sometimes it is 2 or 3 till I
see something again.
Now if they would just stock PDP8/A systems life would be complete.
Thanks
Jim
11:59 a.m.
I seem to recall reading within the last month or three, somebody's opinion where they
took the total number of Arduinos reported to have ever been sold, estimated the total
revenue of all of them, contrasted that against the vastly larger annual revenue of the
ailing Radio Shack, and concluded that the maker movement just isn't large enough to
have made a difference in Radio Shack's survival even if Radio Shack was the
movement's sole supplier. As much as many of us (including me!) lament the passing of
the old local source for electronic components, I've seen plausible arguments that
component sales have never been a large percentage of the revenue that kept Radio Shack
store doors open.
Well anyway, I hope that I can talk my coworkers into stopping by the nearest RS store at
lunchtime today to see if it's still open and whether it's gone into clearance
mode.
I also plan to visit the RS near my home tomorrow. They had some neat hobby stuff when I
was there a couple weeks ago, so maybe I should plunder it if it's on sale. :)
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
12:45 p.m.
I seem to recall reading within the last month or
three, somebody's
opinion where they took the total number of Arduinos reported to have
ever been sold, estimated the total revenue of all of them, contrasted
that against the vastly larger annual revenue of the ailing Radio
Shack, and concluded that the maker movement just isn't large enough to
have made a difference in Radio Shack's survival even if Radio Shack
was the movement's sole supplier. As much as many of us (including me!)
lament the passing of the old local source for electronic components,
I've seen plausible arguments that component sales have never been a
large percentage of the revenue that kept Radio Shack store doors open.
Mark,
I don't know about everyone else but what I had been talking about was a
shift from selling cell phones and "beats" head phones which you can buy
ANYWHERE (i.e. Mall, Mail Order, Best Buy, Staples) to stuff you can't find
everywhere. Hobbyist kits, specialty batteries, cheap cables (think
monoprice not monster), weird converters, connectors, electronic parts
(caps, resistors, ribbon cable, bread boards), etc. RS was not going to be
saved by one single product nor by competing in the super crowded space of
cell phones. They would also have to cut revenue expectations and costs.
This may have saved the company and maybe not. So why didn't management go
this route? More than likely because it was far more profitable for them to
declare bankruptcy, take their golden parachutes, and run.
Survival is a big deal for mom and pop businesses in big corporations just
hanging on is never the top priority.
11:58 a.m.
New subject: Fry's expansion? was: RE: Radio Shack
Marc Verdiell wrote:
Here in the Valley, Fry's Electronics took over,
and then made it so
much better. Fry's is where you stop at lunch time, for amateur or
professional stuff alike, and get an instant replacement for your
fried LM7805.
A few years ago, there was a rumor that Fry's was going to expand out
of the Valley. I wonder whether that might happen now that RS is
on its way out.
Bill S.
2:35 p.m.
New subject: FRY's/Radio Shack
On Fri, 6 Feb 2015, Marc Verdiell wrote:
picking up your capacitor. Let's not forget the
best of it, being chased
around by the totally incompetent sales person that will convince you that
SATA and USB are one and the same thing. Trying to lose him by walking
progressively faster. Man, they can walk fast too, these are trained
professionals. And for the grand finale, being stripped searched going out
the door. How is that for the ultimate nerd store experience!
Love it all. The Fry brothers are geniuses.
But not their staff.
1) Somebody from the college bought a large quantity of memory chips
there. When plugged into a dozen of the college's PC/5150s they
would not work.
BUT, they would work in some generic clones!
I drove an hour to the store, and told them that they would not work in
OEM IBM PCs. They demanded a few hours to TEST them. After returning
from Computer Literacy, I came back. They insisted
that they worked.
They had tried them (hardly a "TEST") in their generic
clone. I repeated
that they did not work in OEM IBM PCs. The "technician" told me that he
wasn't familiar with a BRAND OF COMPUTER named "OEM". They would not even
exchange them.
I wrote a letter to Mary Eisenhart (editor of MicroTimes), with a cc to
David Fry. He came to the college with a bag of working replacements.
(successful resolution)
2) I needed a printer cable. The clerk showed me the USB section.
"Thank you, but this is for an OLD PC"
"Oh, USB 2 will work on USB 1"
"No, really old. IEEE-1284"
"Huh?"
"Micro-ribbon"
"Huh?"
"CENTRONICS"
"OH! Those are printer cables?? I wondered what those were for. We
don't carry them."
(They had some shelved with the SCSI cables)
3) Back when it was a grocery store with a couple of aisles of hobbyist
stuff, it was GREAT!! It was still really good when the groceries were
cut back to only what all night hackers would want (some nukable food,
toothbrushes, snacks, a superb selection of caffeinated sodas (including
Jolt)).
But, when they removed the last of the non-snack foods (bread, peanut
butter, etc.) and opened multiple stores, they were headed towards Radio
Shack.
We used to stop there on the way home from the Foothill swap.
But, eventually, it reached the point where computers and electronics were
secondary to TV and audio crap, with EVERY speaker cranked up to 11.
It became extraordinarily unpleasant to set foot into the store(s).
4) Many items are missing parts! and/or are returned defects. Their
"returns" policy included taking EVERYTHING that was returned, taping the
box back shut and putting it back on the shelf. If the box is damaged, it
gets a token "open box" discount. It is true that many things get
returned due to customer inability to figure it out, rather than actual
malfunction. But, they were not even doing a token "TEST" before
returning the stuff to stock. If you ever return something to Fry's and
are sure that it is actually non-functional, PLEASE write "NFG" all over
the item and all over the box!
5) They were AMAZINGLY late getting a WWW presence. Eventually, they
acquired somebody else that had a website.
In the mid and late 1990s, when I was still teaching an "Introduction To
The Internet" class, I used to give a minor assignment of finding the
least expected web presence (in those days, on the rear fender of UC
Berkeley police cars, etc.), and also what outfit was the most
surprisingly NOT on the web - that one usually went to Fry's.
6) I needed a cheap DVD player. They had two Apex models with a $20
price difference. I asked the clerk about the difference(s). He
proceeded to read aloud the identical feature lists of the two shelf tags.
7) There are a few fake "Fry's Employment Application" forms on the web.
One of the classics is:
http://homepage.smc.edu/engfer_mark/frys.htm
4:42 p.m.
New subject: FRY's/Radio Shack
On 02/06/2015 02:35 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
3) Back when it was a grocery store with a couple of
aisles of hobbyist
stuff, it was GREAT!! It was still really good when the groceries were
cut back to only what all night hackers would want (some nukable food,
toothbrushes, snacks, a superb selection of caffeinated sodas (including
Jolt)).
It was never exclusively a grocery store--it existed with and was
preceded by the Fry's grocery chain. John Fry took some of the family
loot and had an idea to market to the geek community. He told me that
he looked at the margin in PC sales (could be close to 60% in a regular
"computer store") and reasoned that what allowed a grocery store to
exist on a 2% margin might be brought to bear in an electronics store,
without the issues of rotten produce and past sell-by meat.
It is true that he initially had a small section in the store to sell
some geek-specific items--Canfield's Diet Fudge soda being one of the
more notable. He sold it, like later Jolt Cola, by the caselot.
John even sold shareware discs--placed the wire racks right up at the
counter.
His help was basically what amounted to grocery-store type clerks. If
you came to check-out with a VME backplane, they just read off the item
number and entered it into the register. It might as well have been a
bunch of grapes.
I saw my first modern videophone demoed at Fry's. I think it was the
Mitsubishi LU-500, but am not certain after all these years. Fry's sold
a lot of surplus Everex PC expansion boards also. I bought my first box
of 3.5" DSHD floppies at Fry's--they were Fujis and the box cost about
$40 for 10 disks. Cheaper than 8".
Now clearly, you need a certain number and density of customers in the
area served by your store--and the Santa Clara valley was one such location.
--Chuck
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