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by snakeyjake 619 days ago
>I'm still salty about the bafflingly stupid decision to become little more than a cellphone store.

That was a little after my time, but back in the 90s my second job after I got tired of being a dishwasher was at Radio Shack.

During the brief time I worked there if I sold a single Tandy Sensation! (had to say it with the exclamation mark) the profit on that sale would exceed, by a lot, every single component we sold the entire month, and as an awkward teen I sold a lot of Tandy Sensation!s per month.

At my store, when I worked there, electronics parts took up about a quarter of the square footage of the store but was practically none of our revenue.

The only people buying electronics parts were church AV guys trying to fix a worn out 1/4" jack or blown capacitor in an amplifier.

Can't pay rent on those guys.

As an outsider I watched the parts shelves go from most of the back of the store to a single set of drawers to nothing and I can't say I blame Radio Shack. A lot of time was spent inventorying a mindboggling array of components, none of which sold in volumes great enough to justify the expense or the space.

1 comments

The ability to have those parts was lost without the access and distribution enabled by widespread internet.

I would walk to to my local radio shack at least once a week for different parts for a few years as my friend and I were constantly modding our consoles, breaking our computers, and making little gadgets.

I’d love a place I could walk into now and get a breadboard kit or a potentiometer, and it’s just not there.

Microcenter still does but it costs 50% more for worse quality parts and the selection is still not great. Handy if you need flux or solder in a pinch though
My nearest Microcenter is about 200 miles away, but maps did return a similar local shop I’ll have to check out!