Radio
02-09-2015, 07:31 PM
Here are a selection of articles regarding the failure of Radio Shack.
http://www.today.com/money/last-days-radioshack-fans-remember-institution-2D80478605?cid=sm_fbn
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-american-work-week-hurt-radioshack-2015-2
http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-suffered-as-free-time-evaporated-1423441817?mod=e2fb
Do you recall the first time you went into a Radio Shack? WOW! I do! I was about 9 or so and my brother took me over to Greenbriar Mall to the store there. It was huge. I loved the catalog! And all the real electronics stuff for the ham, CBer or just a guy trying to repair his TV (and likely did)
The logic of Radio Shacks failure is speculated upon by WSJ:
In 1979 the average worker put in 1,687 hours a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and by 2007 that number was 1,868. The net difference, 181 hours a year, represents more than a month of extra work every year.
I don't know where they got their numbers but with an average of 6 hours overtime each week I logged closer to 2300 hours. But people make time to do the things they want. This is not the reason Radio Shack is dying. The real reason is failure to dance with the one(s) who brought you. They moved away from the Ham, CB, Audiophile crowd and tried to compete with Walmart and others in the consumer - all plastic - and cell phone markets. And got their heads handed to them.
A generation grew up on RadioShack’s “150 in One Electronic Project Kit.” Remember those? I wanted one so badly in Jr. High. I wanted to do all 150 experiments. You could get a decent start in an electronics career with what you could learn at Radio Shack. Alas, my parents were convinced I'd burn down the house with it so I had many disappointing Christmases. But you couldn't get that at Walmart!
And I still have much of my Realistic stereo component system down in the basement and it sounds so much better than any of the plastic cased crap that passes for sound equipment today.
Radio Shack stood at the brink of greatness. They could have been Microsoft or Apple:
Bill Gates himself wrote the operating system for the original TRS-80. A teenage Michael Dell saw his first PC in the RadioShack that happened to be stationed between his home and school. Steve Wozniak , who more or less single-handedly designed the Apple I and II, was intensely devoted to RadioShack, and relied on it for parts.
They were selling cutting edge computers and writing up the sales on paper ticket books!! ARRG!! Right about this time they lost their way, not realizing the Ham, CB, audiophile crowd were the ones leading the way into the world of computers, and they wanted their computers in addition to, not instead of, the traditional Radio Shack electronics hobby fair.
The Tech America experiment, with all it's hope, failed. Had the internet been available they could have been the next Newegg or Fry's. Instead they wondered around lost, threw out all the hobby stuff and became a cell phone retailer.
Capitalism is a great system but it can be harsh. We all quit spending our money in the odd little store we all grew up in. They no longer catered to us.
And now it's all online at Fry's, Ebay, Amazon, Newegg and others. And Radio Shack will likely not survive our absence.
http://www.today.com/money/last-days-radioshack-fans-remember-institution-2D80478605?cid=sm_fbn
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-american-work-week-hurt-radioshack-2015-2
http://www.wsj.com/articles/radioshack-suffered-as-free-time-evaporated-1423441817?mod=e2fb
Do you recall the first time you went into a Radio Shack? WOW! I do! I was about 9 or so and my brother took me over to Greenbriar Mall to the store there. It was huge. I loved the catalog! And all the real electronics stuff for the ham, CBer or just a guy trying to repair his TV (and likely did)
The logic of Radio Shacks failure is speculated upon by WSJ:
In 1979 the average worker put in 1,687 hours a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and by 2007 that number was 1,868. The net difference, 181 hours a year, represents more than a month of extra work every year.
I don't know where they got their numbers but with an average of 6 hours overtime each week I logged closer to 2300 hours. But people make time to do the things they want. This is not the reason Radio Shack is dying. The real reason is failure to dance with the one(s) who brought you. They moved away from the Ham, CB, Audiophile crowd and tried to compete with Walmart and others in the consumer - all plastic - and cell phone markets. And got their heads handed to them.
A generation grew up on RadioShack’s “150 in One Electronic Project Kit.” Remember those? I wanted one so badly in Jr. High. I wanted to do all 150 experiments. You could get a decent start in an electronics career with what you could learn at Radio Shack. Alas, my parents were convinced I'd burn down the house with it so I had many disappointing Christmases. But you couldn't get that at Walmart!
And I still have much of my Realistic stereo component system down in the basement and it sounds so much better than any of the plastic cased crap that passes for sound equipment today.
Radio Shack stood at the brink of greatness. They could have been Microsoft or Apple:
Bill Gates himself wrote the operating system for the original TRS-80. A teenage Michael Dell saw his first PC in the RadioShack that happened to be stationed between his home and school. Steve Wozniak , who more or less single-handedly designed the Apple I and II, was intensely devoted to RadioShack, and relied on it for parts.
They were selling cutting edge computers and writing up the sales on paper ticket books!! ARRG!! Right about this time they lost their way, not realizing the Ham, CB, audiophile crowd were the ones leading the way into the world of computers, and they wanted their computers in addition to, not instead of, the traditional Radio Shack electronics hobby fair.
The Tech America experiment, with all it's hope, failed. Had the internet been available they could have been the next Newegg or Fry's. Instead they wondered around lost, threw out all the hobby stuff and became a cell phone retailer.
Capitalism is a great system but it can be harsh. We all quit spending our money in the odd little store we all grew up in. They no longer catered to us.
And now it's all online at Fry's, Ebay, Amazon, Newegg and others. And Radio Shack will likely not survive our absence.