alt Hacker News>Radio Shack. Stop selling electronics components, and start targeting to the bigger market of cell phones. Have no competitive advantage over Best Buy or cell phones stores. Keel over.
I was a radio shack employee as a teen in the 90s, right before the pivot to cellphones started. I joined the Army and got the hell out of there right before the 1998 catalog came out, the one with the Sprint PCS partnership on the cover. I helped install and stock the Sprint furniture and signage.
At my store and every single store I was aware of, if they had not pivoted to cellphones they would have gone out of business in 2000.
By 1998 people no longer purchased computers at electronics stores. They either bought them from Gateway, out of PC Magazine or Computer Shopper, or from Walmart.
By 1998 people no longer bought CB radios from electronics stores. They no longer saw Optimus or Realistic scanners/AV receivers as desirable products. Throughout the 80s and early 90s the Japanese brands snuffed out the cheap Radio Shack brands.
By 1998 people hadn't purchased electronic components in volumes high enough to turn a profit (needed to pay wages, rent, and buy inventory) in 10-20 years.
Even in the late 90s, components were a vestigial organ, a money pit, a revenue black hole.
"But I used to buy capacito.." You were the exception.
You were the atypical customer.
You literally lost Radio Shack money and hastened the transformation every time you walked past the CD players and plasma spheres towards the back of the store where the components lived.
> At my store and every single store I was aware of, if they had not pivoted to cellphones they would have gone out of business in 2000.
Let's shorten this: "if they had not pivoted, they would have gone out of business in 2000." A pivot was needed, and a long time earlier. They key question is which pivot.
Identifying a big market, with a lot of competition and no competitive advantage, was better than nothing, but worse than identifying a market with some competitive advantage.
> You literally lost Radio Shack money and hastened the transformation every time you walked past the CD players and plasma spheres towards the back of the store where the components lived.
True.
To make money, they would have needed to monetize me for a lot more than the price of a component. Have a quick look to see what Russian School of Math charges for afterschool math classes, what summer STEM camps cost, or tuition at a university. More critically, look at the derivative -- which prices are going up and which are going down.
If you earn 50 cents selling me a resistor, I'm losing them money.
If you earn $1000 teaching my kid something about electronics. All of a sudden you need far fewer of me, and you broaden the appeal to anyone educated with money and a child.
They had everything in place to do that, right down to wonderful educators like Forrest Mims.
And if they had done that well, there would have been many more of me around now too.