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In reply to the discussion: Radio shacks days are numbered [View all]sendero
(28,552 posts)...... and beyond, I have to throw in my 2 cents about Radio Shack.
When I was a nerd kid, RS was like the malt shop to other kids. Chock full of cool gadgets and more importantly, parts. You could pick up a resistor, capacitor, transistor or diode for your project and if your needs were remotely in the mainstream they would have your part. And the price would be "ok".
As the decades went by electronic hobbyists like myself became scarce. Kids in later generations turned to computers as their technical hobby. RS never really made themselves particularly useful to those folks. After inventing and marketing one of the first microcomputers for the mass public, the TRS-80 (semi-affectionately known as the Trash-80) they just could not shake their "consumer junk" image and become a real force in personal computing.
So the inventory of parts they once had began to diminish. And even worse the prices went way up while the quality went way down.
So that business was not going to help them much. Their consumer electronics, with the possible exception of certain niche products like scanning receivers and CB radios, were never very good and never sold well. Their attempt to live on cellphone sales bought them a few more years but now you can get cell phones at Wal-Mart or any mall or strip mall so the competition is fierce.
I will hate to see RS go under, I still occasionally get an antenna mast or some such that is hard to buy at any other brick and mortar retailer, but I'm frankly surprised they have lasted this long. They are a relic of a day gone by I'm afraid.