Radio Shack

[Mike Whalen]

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