Don’t ask me for my information every time I come in. Don’t you have a computer for that? I stopped going there because they did not respect my time. Chalk it up to lame lame lame management.
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Tandy Corporation (now RadioShack) at one time or another has owned: Color Tile, McDuff Electronics, Video Concepts, The Edge in Electronics, Incredible Universe, Computer City, O’Sullivan Industries, and Coppercraft Guild, as well as Radio Shack and all its subsidiaries.
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Microcenter is what Radio Shack should have grown up to become.
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I think that just putting some Arduinos on a shelf isn’t going to do it.
They should be using their advertising and media reach to bring new people into the field. They should be sponsoring makerspaces and science contests so that “Radio Shack” is an automatic association when people think of building something interesting.
They could try to bring more of the “a” into STE(A)M – imagine a selection of crafts projects (like you might find at a store like Michael’s) but with electronic aspects to the projects – like electrical paint, LEDs, motion sensors, etc. Going to Radio Shack shouldn’t just be about buying some random electronic parts for people who already understand electronics – entering the store should be more of a fun, creative experience:
- Here are tons of ideas on what you can build with things in our store.
- Check out this video of a guy who took photos of Earth from a weather balloon using parts from Radio Shack. (put a few tablets on display with content for customers in the store)
- Here’s a high school kid who built an amazing ____ using these parts…
- Here are 10 ideas of amazing projects you can build with parts from the store: wearables, autonomous balloon drones, SMS powered coffee maker, etc…
- Next month we’re sponsoring a science fair.
- Every Tuesday evening, join our free Arduino/drone/programming class.
- Join the Radio Shack Makers’ Club – a free online platform that teaches you how to build stuff with our parts.
- Play this video game one of our customers designed in our class.
- Outreach to schools with ideas for projects the classes could work on. They could even have some “teachers’ resources” on their websites.
- Etc.
Most things are cheaper online, so people need another reason to go to the stores.
Another idea is to fund promising hardware startups in exchange to get their name on the product – example: satellite startups could have Radio Shack logos on their satellites. “How do ordinary people send cameras into space? We buy our satellite’s Arduinos at Radio Shack.”
The people running the company don’t seem to know about what is going on. Maybe the only way to save it is if Google or another innovative company would buy them. (Google because they own hardware companies and could push all kinds of DIY products that tie into Google services/robots/Nest/Android.) “Radio Shack - powered by Google” might be a way to turn the company around.
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If they can’t make buckets of cash selling electronics these days there is something seriously wrong with Management. No amount of twiddling the catalog is going to fix that. they have a profound disrespect for their customers and have driven way business. Good riddance.
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About two years ago, RS had some guy going around Maker Faire here in the Bay Area interviewing people on what they thought a maker store should be. I pointed out that what they were really asking is how Radio Shack should become a maker store. First thing, I said, is ditch the name. I told him that ever since the 80’s when RS threw all their components into the bargain bin to get rid of them, RS has had a shit reputation among makers. If they had stuck with it, they could have ridden the wave, but they didn’t.
Then I told the guy that I thought it was probably too late, that the Internet had passed them by. Stores like Ada Fruit, Sparkfun, Maker Shed, and yes, DigiKey, and Mouser have all the stock and no retail store overhead. We’ve gotten used to that. Unless they were going to carry all that stock at each and every store, they didn’t have a hope.
Well, apparently they tried, but too sorry too late. Good riddance. Maybe someone else can do retail maker stores the right way, or maybe that concept is obsolete, I don’t know. But it sure as shit could not ever have been Radio Crap.
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Another victim of terrible management - if they are so broke why did they just remodel all their stores in Manhattan?
It’s the well-known phenomenon called “Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”. Or possibly the Politician’s Syllogism. One of those.
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Those of us who live in the Western US may notice that some Fry’s Electronics stores seem to have red girder domes on them. Those are converted “Incredible Universe” locations. It made sense for Tandy to have stores like “Incredible Universe” that sold consumer electronics. What never made sense to me was how Radio Shack themselves turned into that.
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He may be just a Vogon with no use for one.
Again?
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you mean, leather goods?
they started in leather.
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i was given a guilt trip, an actual guilt trip by an hourly employee, when i refused to give my name and address for a cash transaction a while back. like her job depended on getting my info.
probably more profit in that than in cell phones.
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I’m in the UK so I just use 01632 numbers. No one has realised what they are yet.
I knew a RS manager who had in the store’s computer a phantom customer: first name ‘Cash’, last name ‘Sales’, address and phone number of the store. It wound up looking nice printed on the receipt: ‘Cash Sales/123 Main St/Wherever, CA’ and as far as I can tell, the store brass were never the wiser.
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You were buying a project kit in the late 60s… I’m guessing you were at least 8-9 at the time. It’s now 2014. Sorry to break it to ya, but… Yeah.
RS and Farnell are totally different kinds of companies from Radio Shack and are certainly still going strong but they focus on the professional market more than the end userS. They do sell to end users of though, sold a lot of Raspberry Pi’s when they first came out.
A year ago I needed to make a simple return at RS. There was one employee, and one other customer ahead of me. I hope in the autopsy the coroner finds that RadioShack died from choking on the two hours of my time it ate up.
Probably Monoprice, just like everybody else.
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Good math skills, I was born in 1961. And on a totally unrelated note, let me say as I shake my fist---- Stay off my lawn!
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RS is a big supporter of the maker movement. They often have a full page or two ad in Make magazine with a project you can do with RS parts. They are less than perfect, but still often had what I needed to buy on the shelf for my amateur electronics projects. I’ll be sorry to see them go.
