It became not friendly and groping. That’s why I haven’t been to a Radio Shack in years. Plus, they’re not with the times. Sure, they may sell Arduino and some parts, but they aren’t doing it right. They could be hosting events, having maker groups onsite for trainings at a big table, and make their presence known. Instead, they lurk in old strip malls like a creepy guy in a trenchcoat waiting to bust it open and say heyyyyy what’s your zipcode and your phone number, customer? Wrong, wrong wrong. Shape up or ship out. This is a good use of market forces: make them go away or reform.
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I had the unfortunate experience just last week of being reminded that the RS in my town has up and vanished some time ago, and the nearest one was 25mi away. But then, it’s not like “I need a new RJ-11 to 3.5mm phone recording splitter because my bird bit through the old one” is a reasonable business-sustaining scenario.
(For anyone needing a similar device, I recommend DealExtreme or MonoPrice if you can wait the 2-3 weeks. Amazon only if you need it in a hurry.)
Dealxtreme just started a US based business, so one might be able to get stuff a wee bit faster.
DealExtreme has been offering US-origin shipping on some items for a year or more now. Frankly, I’ve not been a fan because the prices I’ve seen were inexplicably higher for the same items – and the availability of items seemed pretty limited. But now I’m seeing DXSoul list some things cheaper, which surprises me.
That said, I tried the exact same search term on both sites: RJ-11 3.5mm adapter. Looks like when DX put together DXSoul they didn’t even reuse the code-base. While the first hit on DX.com was the exact item I wanted, I’ve yet to find it on DXSoul. Not only that, the results on DXSoul are filled with unrelated items. Colour me unimpressed.
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I haven’t checked it out yet… I guess that I can take my time based on your “review”.
Yeah- They have. WHERE’S THE DAMN ADVERTISING SAYING SO?
That’s the infuriating thing, is that they HAVE the infrastructure, they HAVE the customer base, they HAVE the reputation to really push this sort of thing. They could have built an entire marketing campaign around “more fun to build it”, or “save money- fix it yourself”, or “master your technology”, or something.
Instead of running full steam with the one thing they have that nobody else does, they chose to compete for cell phone sales with every minimart and mall kiosk in the country. That’s just shit management. You should see what their last CEO is up to now.
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Also James Gooch- Who’s been responsible for instigating a mass uprising at the company he’s running now.
A company with 25 locations? They’re working on that.
A lot of ridiculous comments here. Owning the MakerBot niche wouldn’t do one iota to save Radio Shack; the market is far, far, far too small to have any impact. Certainly not to support all the physical locations. Selling more twenty-cent parts for Makers who don’t want to order online?
I don’t know what might have saved Radio Shack, if anything. It’s a business that, kind of like selling books or music, doesn’t really make sense in an online world.
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It is all hype.
The “maker movement” is ultra niche, not big enough to support a chain of stores the size of RS.
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Was the radio enthusiast market really that much bigger back in the day? It seems like largely the same crowd then and now.
Sounds like a plan - Mom and Pop’s eBits Emporium!
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I think the key is more likely with localist places picking up the slack to cater specifically to their clientele while providing a space for the like-minded to gather. A national store is never going to fill the space that niches are going to be much more nimble to allow for growth where the locals require.
http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/
http://tinkersphere.com/en/
It isn’t hype. We’re at the dawn of the next big age of human technological advancement where we have:
- A giant planetary network (Internet)
- Open-source software movement
- and now an open-source hardware movement
There isn’t a huge entry barrier for inventing big things any more. If you have an idea, you can go learn how to build it without needing a lot of money or an engineering degree.
In the 1990s, the Internet existed, but people didn’t really use email. (Example: I don’t have email addresses from most people I knew in the 90s.) The Internet grew in the early 2000s and became really huge with the advancements in smartphones over the past few years.
The open-hardware movement is at the stage the Internet was in during the 90s. In a few years it will be mainstream, and in 10 or 15 it will be visible in every aspect of life. (wearables, DIY home automation, high school kids who solve big technical problems, IoT, etc.)
It sounds like Radio Shack doesn’t have enough cash to survive on its own, but Google would have enough cash and products to make it quickly self-sustaining: Android, Nest, wearables, kits, etc. If they would stick to an open-software and open-hardware policy, developers and makers would probably support them.
Google have been closing down their integration with open protocols like XMPP and RSS, but I think they should turn that direction around, buy Radio Shack, and teach people how to use the stuff they sell there.
Edit: “Radio Shack” is an outdated name, but they could call it “Radio Shack by Google” for a year or two before calling it “The Google Store” or whatever they want.
Call it Software-Defined-Radio Shack… That way they can change the meaning whenever they want.
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So what you are saying is that Google should rescue the effort that an ailing company wasn’t interested to undertake because it was (it isn’t) profitable?
In an era that people are moving from quite open devices (general purpose computers) to quite locked down ones (tablets, mobile phones, cloud reliant devices) en mass, you are asserting that people will leave all that and start to build their own stuff in underpowered little bits of hardware, produced mostly in an autocratic country? Open Hardware brought to you by the Chinese Communist Party!
This “maker movement” has not much to do with the Internet of the 90s, to most people it was obvious that the Internet could bring massive changes to the way we interacted with each other, you would have needed to be blind (or Bill Gates) not to realize this.
This “maker movement” has no immediacy and will change precious little since DIY doesn’t make anything more efficient. I am not denying it may give some people a feeling of empowerment, but not everybody is in search of such kind of experience: most people are happy to pay a few bucks for something that works and forget about it until it needs to be upgraded or replaced.
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Yes – but not exactly. Radio Shack may have started with that direction, but they didn’t take it far enough quickly enough. Google actually has products that they could directly sell: Android, Nest, Chromebooks, and in the future, robots.
[quote=“Tzctboin, post:75, topic:38230”]
In an era that people are moving from quite open devices (general purpose computers) to quite locked down ones (tablets, mobile phones, cloud reliant devices) en mass, you are asserting that people will leave all that and start to build their own stuff in underpowered little bits of hardware, produced mostly in an autocratic country?[/quote]
Like I mentioned, Google should also move back towards an open hardware/software direction. I don’t mean that the average consumer wants to build a phone from scratch, but if they had tools to buy pieces of hardware (or a kit) that would do something interesting when interacting with the phone, that would appeal to the mainstream.
People are also happy to pay tons of money for craft supplies even when they could buy finished products. Radio Shack should become more of a “crafts” store but focused on technical DIY kits and projects. If Google were selling products with open APIs that could all talk to each other, and kits/tutorials that explained things, I think it would take off.
Think more along the lines of something like this rather than “building a phone from parts”.
I just searched around and found this page, which looks like they’ve at least started to try.
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