[Coco] Another Radio Shack Article

[Bill Loguidice]

There would be no viable market for a new CoCo 3, particularly not at the
$100 price point. You have to remember that Atari TV games (and Sega, as
well as the upcoming ColecoVision and Intellivision units, and even the
C-64 unit from 2004) are always targeted to sell at minimum, hundreds of
thousands of units, and on the upper end, a million or more. There's just
not enough nostalgia for Tandy products to hit those mass production
numbers, and I can tell you from direct experience that there has been
nothing Tandy brought up as a possibility by the main purveyor of such
devices, AtGames (not surprising, considering we're talking videogame
products, not computing products). What Tandy could have done was gotten
into the Rasberry Pi and similar product business, perhaps increasing
margins a bit by having custom value-added bundles instead of selling the
$35 base units (which would have been pitiful margins). With that said,
outside of the Maker sections of some stores, Radio Shack's were not really
configured for that type of business anymore. They took a gamble on cell
phones and had all their marketing and resources behind that. Now, if they
want to once again give their stores a new direction, it will take a
monumental effort (the advertising alone) and monetary resources that they
may no longer have. Regardless, it's a very different time for electronics
retailers, and a LOT of business is now done online by stores laser focused
on meeting the needs of the most demanding consumers.

On the other end, it's impossible to ignore the squeeze put on by
everything retailers like Amazon. Even Best Buy was in serious trouble
before they made some significant changes, including putting stores within
a store, where companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung essentially pay
rent to have a retail presence in the store. That's a very different
proposition though than what Radio Shack can do from retail locations that
are closet-like in comparison to the vast warehouse-like settings of a Best
Buy. It may just be that there's not a place for a Radio Shack in the
modern world. With that said, of course I'd like to see them make one last
honest effort at a reimagining, and it certainly would be nice to see them
go back to the old school hobbyist roots (somehow).

-Bill

===================================================
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade,
Inc.<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
===================================================
Authored Books<http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1>and
Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
===================================================


On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 7:28 AM, <iggybeans at comcast.net> wrote:

> >" I don't know what they might have done differently once the Wintel
> cancer metastasized. How could >they have stayed in the computer business
> once PC clones were cheap, fungible commodity items?"
>
>
> Possibly continued to focus on hobbyists, hackers, and those interested in
> hardware and software projects?
> Commodity computing was hardly the death note to recreational computing,
> it survives to this day.
> As the average price of a Coco3 is now back up to about $100, and the
> price of production would actually be lower than in the past, why not build
> a few more?
>
>
> Sounds crazy? That explains all those Atari retro machines that have been
> built.
>
>
> AND, Tandy had a strong foothold in the Wintel market.
>
>
> They decided to give up, no market force dictated it.
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>