On Tue, 23 May 2017, Foxs Mercantile wrote:
On 5/23/2017 1:29 PM, wrote:
This is a sad day..... Radio Shack is the last of the old
electronics stores
Radio Shack was NEVER an old time radio store.
Except maybe back in the '50s before Tandy Leather bought
them.
Yes. They were traditional when they were a s mall chain in the Boston
area. But they were going bankrupt, which is why Tandy bought the chain.
And one reason Radio Shack was successful after that was that it was
everywhere, at a time when electronics were widening. The average home in
1971, the year Radio Shack came to Canada, had a tv or so, some am/fm
radios, maybe a record player or stereo. But five years later, there were
pocket calculators, digital watches, home computers, tv games, endless
stuff and getting wider, the result of the switch to semiconductors, and
then especially digital ICs. And Radio Shack was there on every corner, a
more familiar place than the old time electronic parts stores that were in
basements away from the mainstream. Radio Shack was niche back then, but
it was a place when a wider audience could get those metal detectors or
shortwave receivers or scanners or whatever without having to go to some
niche store. There was no competition, the others came later. Radio
Shack was there every time something new came along, so you could get that
Casio music keyboard that would sample, even if you were in some small
town.
ANd that's how the parts survived, Radio Shack could sell other things and
carry the parts. ANd it worked. I didn't buy parts there much, too
expensive and limited in selection, but it was convenient. But since I
paid attention and got the catalogs, when I started buying "stereo" stuff,
I bought at Radio Shack, usually when the item was on sale, or better yet,
a clearance item. And I bought a bunch of computers there, since they
were convenient. The catalog gave all the information, I could just go in
and get the item off the shelf.
And then at some point, other companies were doing the same thing, and
Radio Shack stumbled, losing its way.
Michael