[Coco] More poor news for Radio Shack

[Frank Pittel]

I have to admit I don't go to RS much anymore so take what I'm going to write for what it's worth.

The reason I gave up on RS was that they seemed to give up on me. I used to like going to the stores
for their kits (anyone remember the red and clear plastic box where the box acted as the PC board) and
components. Then sometime during the 80's they decided that they wanted to sell electronic toys like RC cars, etc.

At that point the inventory of their kits and component selection basically dried up. They have a little but not nearly
enough variety so I started ordering from places like Newark, etc. From things got worse and they moved to selling cell
phones and their inventory of the stuff I was interested in continued to decrease. Sadly RS went from being a place I
could spend hours "browsing" and thinking of all the things I could buy to irrelevant to me.

The reason I was given was that DIY electronic hobbiest was a dying market and there wasn't any money in it!! For a long time
that seemed to be true. The advent of the micro-controller has changed all of that and the market has exploded again but sadly
RS has only made a half hearted attempt to get back into the market and become relevant again. A Microcenter near me has gotten
into the "maker" market and has dedicated space almost as large as a RS store to DIY electronics! Complete with kits, components, etc.
I spoke with the manager of the store and they have plans to expand the amount of space because the demand is so high. That of course
doesn't include the serial cables, adaptors, plugs, etc that we used to go to RS for in different areas of the store.

The sad fact is that RS doesn't want to be a store that DIY or hobbiest go to. They're now a store that sells cell phones and off brand
rechargable batteries for almost twice as much as name brand stuff available at the walgreens, Jewel, etc just short walk down the block
from them!!

The Other Frank
On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 05:18:06PM -0600, Allen Huffman wrote:
> Agreed! But I guess they are like record stores and book stores... Who would have thought all of those would be gone!
> 
> 
> > On Dec 12, 2014, at 1:10 PM, Zippster <zippster278 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > If they had prices like digikey and mouser with free shipment to the local store,
> > I would use them constantly.  No doubt.  :)
> > 
> > - Ed
> 
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