[Coco] Another Radio Shack Article

[Louis Ciotti]

Lets face it anyone on this list is going to have some skewed opinion of
Radio Shack back in the day and Radio Shack now.  If one really thinks
about it our beloved RS has a tough road ahead of them assuming they are
going to attempt yet another re-branding.  I mean really where do they go?
Most on this list will ultimately say they have to get back to their
hobbyist roots, myself included.  But in reality that will be a disaster.
How many patrons will you see there to buy component parts, prototype
boards, electronics kits?  Todays youth, heck even in the 30+ crowd you
will find very little interest in building electronics.  With a population
so used to being able to hop in a car and go buy a radio, mp3 player,
blue-ray player all for under $50 each, nobody has an interest in building
anything.


There is no way they can get into the computer market, even if they
attempted, what would they sell?  90% of the non-apple fanatic market
will drag themselves to the local Walmart and pick up a windows PC for a
few hundred bucks and call it a day.

Gone are the days where people had to put up an antenna to watch 3 TV
stations, or have to change a tube to get the TV/Radio running.  The
need/desire for a bulk of the population sees no need to build anything on
their own.  Electronics have become disposable items.  Heck when was the
last time you seen a TV repair shop? Just look at how many people would
change their own oil, or flat tire.  In a society built off of instant
gratification, any store geared toward a hobby market will struggle unless
they cater to multiple hobbies at the same time.  i.e. hobby lobby-ish is
what pops into my mind.




On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Bill Loguidice <bill at armchairarcade.com>wrote:

> 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.
> >
> > --
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> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
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> >
>
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