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According to Bloomberg Amazon is in talks to buy some of RadioShack's stores:
Amazon has considered using the RadioShack stores as showcases for the Seattle-based company’s hardware, as well as potential pickup and drop-off centers for online customers, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the deliberations are private.
RadioShack is on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, and according to other reports, it has also been in talks with wireless carrier Sprint about selling some of its stores. The deal with Amazon may not happen, but nonetheless, it shows where Amazon is headed.
To head off competition from Wal-Mart—one of the few retailers that could pose a legitimate threat to Amazon—and to expand its operation, the company has adopted a new hybrid business model, combining e-commerce with offline services.
Originally spotted at Wired, and also linked at HackerNews.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Wednesday February 04 2015, @06:05PM
Yes, absolutely.
They should have avoided high-margin, well-advertised, low-diversity (relatively few options to keep in stock) items that have a large customer demand and turn over frequently.
Instead, they should have stayed focused on low-margin, high-diversity (you have to stock an awful lot of resistors to be sure you have the one I need in stock...), low-turnover items that catered to a small community of hobbyists who tend to shop infrequently and make low-dollar purchases.
That's a winning business model if I've ever heard of one.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday February 04 2015, @07:00PM
Sounds great in theory. The problem is that Walmart, OfficeDepot, etc are all operating on the same theory, keep pretty much all the high-margin same stuff in stock, sells it for substantially cheaper, and have loads of other stuff you can buy as long as you're there. So why would anyone walk in the doors at RadioShack in the first place? And then of course there's the internet. That leaves Radioshack with a market consisting of those people who want it today, and would rather pay a substantial premium than shop at one of the megastores. Might still be viable if they actually did something to embrace that demographic, but these days they're just the smaller, more expensive version of the megastores and, oh yeah, we've might have some resistors and LEDs in that cabinet in the back.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Wednesday February 04 2015, @07:34PM
Yup, most of the purchases at my local RS seem to be cellphones...but there's two dedicated cellphone stores right in the same plaza! Those stores are bigger and 100% devoted to phones; RS is tiny and only a small portion of that is phones. How did they hope to compete in that market? They'd probably need to close some of their stores either way, but at least if they had focused on the hobbyist electronics they could have *completely* owned that market across most of the country. And they charge $2+ for a cardboard sleeve of 5 resistors -- resistors worth less than a cent each, probably less than a cent for all five -- so I'm sure they make damn good margins on those components too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday February 04 2015, @08:12PM
Well, let's see. They used to specialize in those lower volume products you can't get just anywhere and were a growing business. Then they focused on the stuff you can get at Best Buy, Target, and Walmart for less money AND got rid of any sales staff that knew any more than a random stock person at any of those stores and now they're dead.
Sure, they have to stock a lot of resistors to be sure to have the one you need (or close enough), but resistors are small and easy to move around.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Fauxlosopher on Thursday February 05 2015, @12:57AM
The way I heard the story told was that the police told RadioShack to stop resisting...
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday February 05 2015, @10:59PM
Sure, they have to stock a lot of resistors to be sure to have the one you need (or close enough), but resistors are small and easy to move around.
As someone who works with hardware every single day, I'd say that today we have such a variety of parts that RS has no chance in hell to even come close to the likes of Digikey and Mouser. Digikey runs one highly automated warehouse that has everything. Shipping from Thief River Falls, MN is simple and not too expensive. RS's business model would require having such a warehouse in every store... that is insane, of course. It's the business model that failed, not just the RS itself. In the olden days of tube- and transistor-based analog TVs you could get away with having an assortment of 5% resistors and 20% capacitors, and they would work in most devices. Today you need 1% resistors and precise capacitors with a specific thermal coefficient. Back then you could use 2N2222 for most tasks; today, even if the same silicon works for you, there are 33 package types, from chip-scale QFN and BGA to chassis mount :-) (well, not for this silicon, but you get the drift.)
Note that Fry's still sells discrete passives and a few semiconductors. I haven't seen anyone buying, though. They are awfully expensive - not because the parts themselves cost a lot, but because the selling process itself (the packaging, the shelf space, the labor to hang it and to count them) is very costly. Most of what they still have is old through-hole, axial parts that hardly anyone can use these days.
To add to the problem, modern electronics is hard to repair, and often is not worth of repair. There are no schematics provided with equipment anymore. Everything is company secret, IP and all. There are programmed parts (CPLDs, FPGAs, MCUs) with proprietary firmware. There are unmarked parts (most of small parts are non-uniquely marked; 0402 and smaller are not marked at all.) Compare to an old tube TV - a defect there often could be seen with unaided eye (a burned resistor, or a dark vacuum tube) and there were service manuals.
Today some people still build stuff. But if you build something, you might just as well do it right. Do not use an obsolete part that RS just happens to have (today - but perhaps not tomorrow) for $5. Order one that you need - the latest silicon - from Digikey for $0.50 per piece. Do not build your project on a perf board - order a cheap 2-sided PCB for mere $33 each at Advanced Circuits. Do not buy through-hole parts that are hard to get and hard to use - switch to surface mount technology, make your project smaller and lighter. Sure, some of that costs you some money - but in the end you cannot expect to build something out of nothing; often it is a great effort-saving measure. And it is also future-proofs your design, as old junk that is still sold at a few places is being quickly washed out of distribution channels. You do not want to build something that you won't be able to repair or improve tomorrow.
RS rode a wave of building stuff at home; that wave has ended. Another wave is moving in, but RS cannot be a part of it. They simply acknowledged that and accepted. At best RS could act as a front end of Digikey - but who'd need them, as Digikey can be accessed from anywhere? There would be only a limited consulting function... but RS has no consultants anymore, and it's a demanding position to be in anyway.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 06 2015, @04:19AM
A lot of people do like to prototype a circuit on a breadboard. That calls for axial components.
Digikey has more stuff, but they have nothing at all I can place my hands on in the next hour.
Agreed that RS long ago got rid of any salesperson who had any advice on electronics to offer even to children just learning it. They used to do fairly well with a combination of students and retired engineers but working conditions got bad enough that either can do much better.
It's the olf story again. First they downsized, then they "rightsized". Finally, they have capsized.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday February 06 2015, @04:42AM
A lot of people do like to prototype a circuit on a breadboard. That calls for axial components. Digikey has more stuff, but they have nothing at all I can place my hands on in the next hour.
Those people can buy a resistor kit [digikey.com] at Digikey for $15. The kit contains 72 values, total 360 pieces. How many resistors of the same kind can you buy at RS for that money, packaged two or three per box? Digikey has RS not just defeated, but hammered a mile down into the ground, as each part in this kit costs only 4 cents to you - and Digikey still makes profit on it. I don't think that $15 is a significant expense today. I have several kits of passives that I need for alignment of circuits. They work great, and they are available to me not within one hour but within one minute. A reasonably stocked lab is a necessary condition for efficient hardware work, and anyone can buy enough kits for that for the cost of a few pizzas. The absolutely worst disservice that you can do to yourself is to buy parts one by one as you need them. R and C kits, plus a couple of BJTs and MOSFETs will be sufficient to build pretty much any analog circuit of shortwave and lower frequency range. If you need ICs, it's extremely unlikely that RS has what you need anyhow.