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The company that arose from RadioShack's 2015 bankruptcy saga could soon itself be filing for bankruptcy.
General Wireless is reportedly on the brink of seeking protection from creditors and entering the liquidation process. The biz could not be reached for comment. The formal paperwork for the bankruptcy could be posted within a matter of days, it is claimed.
A liquidation of General Wireless will effectively mark the end of RadioShack, which opened its first store in 1921 and became a mainstay of electronics hobbyists through the rise of the home computing era.
The retailer was nearly liquidated outright in 2015 after years of struggling to keep up with competition from online stores and a financial plummet that saw the value of its stock fall so sharply it was removed from the New York Stock Exchange.
Micro Center remains, but in the era of Adafruit, Seeed Studio, Sparkfun, and others are big-box retailers still relevant?
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday March 07 2017, @05:22PM (8 children)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday March 07 2017, @06:02PM (5 children)
While I don't disagree, the problem is that the overhead to provide what you want in "service and convenience" is probably a lot more expensive than most folks are willing to pay for. In addition to rent and utilities for the store and employee salaries (for folks who frequently end up "standing around" during low customer periods, rather than a warehouse worker at a large shipping center who can have more consistent workload), there are oodles of other inefficiencies. You want a better in-store selection? It costs money to have stuff sitting on shelves and even more money to have a stockroom in the back with any significant extra inventory. You want knowledgeable staff? Well, then you have to pay a wage that will attract high quality employees and encourage them to stay with that job for several years. Add in all those costs, and local physical stores have a REALLY hard time competing.
So it just becomes increasingly infeasible each year for stores to offer that sort of service. The best most of them can hope for is just a little more "convenience" in getting a product right away, but if Amazon or others start doing fast drone delivery or whatever, it's likely "game over" for local retail.
But I do have to disagree with that last point:
b) be knowledgeable about the "not printed on the box" differences between the products.
Regardless of the difficulties in finding and paying knowledgeable people, I just don't think that's a reasonable request anymore. Back in the day (decades ago) when you went to your local camera shop (yes, a shop specializing in cameras and related equipment only), they had certain models in stock. In a particular price/feature range, you might have 2 or maybe 3 choices. The owner could decide what to stock and could get to know those products in detail. The guy chose to own or work at a camera store obviously because he loved cameras and would be interested in knowing about them.
Now you want a person at RadioShack or whatever to have intimate knowledge of hundreds of different types of products they stock in all sorts of categories? It just isn't feasible. I remember trying to ask advice on such things years ago, but I think the last time I actually trusted the advice of a salesperson at such at store was during a computer purchase back in 2001, when I ended up buying something that really was quite different from what the guy claimed it was. Ever since, I do my research first online and NEVER listen to a salesperson. At best, even if they have some clue, their opinion is only one out of many experts out there; at worst, they're trying to sell you something that fits their needs (commission, getting rid of extra stock, whatever) more than actually caring about what you want.
The only salespeople I generally trust are those who work at smaller shops who still have a dedicated set of repeat customers and who obviously have specialized knowledge. Anything you hear from a guy wondering around at a giant warehouse store should be viewed with suspicion.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Tuesday March 07 2017, @07:01PM (2 children)
15 years ago, I was knowledgeable (enough) and I tried. Went in when I was 18 and got an interview at Rat Shack, boasting that I was a hobbyist and knew all about the products they sold, eagerly talking about the magical days of going through the component shelves looking for stuff I needed. The manager, frowning, asked me what I knew about Sprint and Dish, because that was all that mattered I told him, unhappy, that I passed by at least four cell phone stands walking through the mall to get there and that neither I or any of my friends are on Sprint, and that you can call a phone number to order Dish rather than drive 30 minutes to get to the mall to sign up for a product they have to ship to you anyway. I didn't get the job. I learned a lot that day though.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 07 2017, @07:27PM
boasting that I was a hobbyist and knew all about the products they sold
A couple decades ago when I was that kid myself, the problem was Radio Shack averaged with commissions much closer to the food store pay rate than being a bench tech at the local medical light industrial which is still open and in business.
So that's how I ended up at the food store as a side job while going to school. Its about the same pay, the hours were better and more reliable...
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 08 2017, @02:49PM
I had an interview at Radio Shack once.
The manager was able to confirm that yes, they were phasing out the electronic component section.
I was confused by the decision since Best Buy has more floor space to sell the same thing (consumer electronics).
Obviously, I did not get the job.
(Score: 2) by theronb on Tuesday March 07 2017, @11:44PM (1 child)
We can pitch in and help the employees. Like a lot of of folks, I often buy electronics at the local big box store - their prices are pretty competitive for common stuff and I can take it back if something isn't right. I agree about not expecting the employees to know everything about everything so when I get the opportunity, I help educate a sales person on something that I know about. Last week I was looking at a display next to where a sales guy was being questioned by a woman looking at camera filters. He was stumped but I knew something (I use filters), so I offered to help and they both went away happy.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 08 2017, @06:32PM
Good for the customers. I doubt it helps the sales droids though.
Last time I was at an electronics store, it was with a coworker who was looking for a prepaid SIM card. So we ask at the front, they look it up and say they don't think they have it -- even though their own website said they did. So we decided to look anyway, went back to the electronics section and asked there. They say they don't carry prepaid SIM cards. We walked around to the opposite side of the aisle where those guys were standing, and found an entire display of nothing but prepaid SIM cards, including nearly a half dozen different options from the carrier we'd been asking about (H2O Wireless).
So yeah...not only can they not answer questions, they can't even tell you what they have in stock. They can't even tell you what CATEGORIES of items they have in stock. They couldn't possibly care less.
Lately, if I can't find a product in a store, I use their website to find it. Seriously, it's usually faster to pull out the smartphone, find their website, do a search across the entire inventory for what you need (even if you even don't know exactly what you need) and then figure out what aisle it would be in based on what category it's under on the website rather than trying to find an employee that has a clue.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 07 2017, @07:20PM
b) be knowledgeable about the "not printed on the box" differences between the products.
Even a quarter century ago people gave up on that at supermarkets. People laugh at stories about customers asking some stock clerk how to cook some weird thing. Its not limited to electronics. I remember stocking shelves and I was too young and dumb to understand she was a cougar on the prowl but I was getting bugged by this nice looking middle aged single lady how to cook the angelfood cake I was shelving box mixes of and being a young idiot rather than getting laid I politely got rid of her with "idonno" and so on.
The problem with personalized service is if they're honest about it, its skilled professional level charges like accountant or lawyer or dentist, and if they're not honest about the upfront expense then they're going to squeeze it out of me in ridiculous high prices.
There is a market bifurcation which is rarely recognized for what it is, where some people WANT the engineer experience and I love nothing more than digikey parametric search and looking at 750000 data sheets for the perfect microwave bypass capacitor, whereas the more casual or normie supposedly wants someone else to do most of the work of making an arduino make LEDs sewn into the hem of their new sundress flicker like flames and they don't want engineer cooties and can't they just pay someone to do their thinking for them?
And its all in a patina of people grew up playing DnD / Pathfinder and they just want to walk into the blacksmiths shop and get advice about swords or the commodity microcontroller or something. The real world hasn't worked like a DnD scenario in 100, 200 years maybe.
Another problem is I just came from a business meeting at a low to mid level restaurant and the waitress was visibly high. She was actually very nice and productive while she was high as hell. But you have to realize that if you mix an economic system where being retail and customer facing is utterly miserable poverty grind while demanding personal service you're just going to end up with ... suboptimal customer-employee interactions most of the time. A hot chick who's high as a kite can serve you a nice cheezeburger because thats not terribly cognitively demanding, but in the electronics realm, "hey baby I need a NPN general purpose switching transistor with a Vce rating higher than the 40 volts of a 2n3904 I don't need a extreme Hfe anything over 20 will do and Ft doesn't matter at all, now whatcha got on tap at this dive bar of a transistor supply shop?" and meanwhile her eyes are all wild and her speech is a little weird because shes high as hell and I hope she didn't drive to work like that (but she probably did). I mean that worked on the 60 year old retired navy guy at the supply room at uni but he was salaried probably three times what this waitress got. I mean we were nice to her and she was nice to us and she was hot so if she spit on my food thats kinda hot but what works for selling cheezeburgers doesn't work for technical hobbyist specialty shops.
The whole scene is just weird and obsolete.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 07 2017, @08:07PM
For digital cameras I use a shibboleth to avoid the dumb clerks. Just ask the sales clerk to show you non diffraction limited ones at the pixel density you want. Thankfully where I live we have a pretty good camera shop (it isn't B&H but then I don't have to wait a week for stuff to show up in the mail after paying for shipping) and the clerks there can inform someone like my wife on digital cameras to her level of comfort, yet I can go in and have a discussion about a possible replacement for my Pentax Spotmatic F and assorted good lenses that is very technical. Unfortunately to match the quality of what I have now I would end up spending $15,000 to $20,000, $2000 of that would be for a chassis and the rest would be for lenses and other non compatible accessories, and for that kind of money I can pay for a lot of film and developing.
The nice thing about that store is that they can point you to other sources if they don't carry it or can't do it. I found a guy nearby who specializes in repairing Spotmatics through them the last time I was in so I can bring my camera to him to give it a good cleaning and servicing. They also do keep a selection of "vintage" cameras and accessories and when you find that 17mm f/4 ultra wide angle lens at a reasonable price that you have been looking for you end up spending $325.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone