Flutterby™! : the future of Radio Shack 2011-06-02 00:35:38.267871+00

the future of Radio Shack

2011-06-02 00:35:38.267871+00 by Dan Lyke 6 comments

Brainwagon: What should Radio Shack do to satisfy the DIY/Maker community?

In the nineties, Tandy (Radio Shack) had a store in Atlanta called “Tech America” It was what Radio Shack had been, writ large. They closed it after only about a year. While I can’t expect them to open one in every backwater (I currently live in the Toledo, Ohio area) It would be a good start back toward their roots.

At 5am EST, today, as I make a null serial cable from two APC UPS serial cables and a fingernail clipper... I'd love to see a real Radio Shack open up again. But lets be honest, the make more money off of batteries, cell phones and Christmas toys than they could possibly make from "makers" and "professionals". As we look at the Radio Shack of our youth, with rose colored glasses, we see what we want to see. It never ever was that great, including the Radio Shack at Tandy Center in Fort Worth when I was a young electronics technician in the USAF in Fort Worth.

What is great, is if you look around, you'll find a couple of local places like Shields or other places that cater to professionals, but also tolerate the guy tinkering with 555 chips.

Digikey has been rocking lately.. They even send glossy monthly-ish tech "how to" with circuit diagrams. Their LED lighting issue is/was incredible.

I just wish Popular Mechanics was what I remember them being. (Probably not what they actually were.)

#Comment Re: made: 2011-06-02 14:03:18.686179+00 by: ebradway [edit history]

While we are reminiscing... I miss Byte Magazine - back in the days of Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar. It was nice to get all my programming, hardware and electronics news in one (really thick) magazine.

Radio Shack was more of a gateway drug. If you could make it through Forrest Mims' Getting Started in Electronics, you probably never went back into Radio Shack except in an emergency. Their prices were crazy high but it was the only place you could walk into on a Sunday afternoon and find 75% of what you were looking for.

Andy might remember Lafayette Electronics which was both a brick and mortar retail store and a catalog seller in the '60s.

Radio Shack could do far worse than to simply stock a wall full of SparkFun products. SparkFun does a great job of picking out the stuff hobbyists probably want. A Radio Shack full of Arduino boards, shields, nifty sensor breakouts, motor control boards, and the like would start to be a place worth visiting again.