RIP Radio Shack

[Joe ODonnell]

http://www.zdnet.com/article/after-almost-a-cenutry-in-business-radioshack-files-for-bankruptcy

Radio Shack was a main stay of electronics hobbyists and technicians for decades, and in fact nearly a century.

Many remember their first use of a personal computer in a Radio Shack store in the late 70's to early 80's.

Radio Shack also carried all the supplies and components to build circuits from the ground up, 

which was how most electronic projects were made before surface mount made pre assembled boards really cheap.

Many electronics using musicians, ham's, car stereo enthusiasts and repair people also made regular use of Radio Shack.

Countless people started in electronics with the Forest Mims pamphlets at Radio Shack.

Their prices were always at least 5-100 times the cost of buying through the mail but nothing beats the convenience of

buying a part the same day it's needed. 

The demise of the Shack, a process that has taken years and is still ongoing, means that Maker Spaces are

now the default place to go for electronics needs that can't wait a week. DIY electronics has lost a titan but

with the Maker community, KickStarter and more the future has never been brighter.

[gs volt]

I did wonder why they didn't _ever_ create make spaces in them. That would have added to the make/hack spaces nation wide immensely.

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[Spokehedz]

If you don't see the changes coming, you are doomed to failure. The
people who could have made the changes were more content getting
billions from their clauses in the contracts than saving the store.

--
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like
that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to
success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love,
everything.” -- Nikola Tesla

"Nikola Tesla is the true unsung prophet of the electronic age; without whom
our radio, auto ignition, telephone, alternating current power generation
and transmission, radio and television would all have been impossible."
-- Ben Johnston

[Joe ODonnell]

 I also wondered why they didn't include a maker area, and asked some of the clerks why.

They told me that most of the stores profit for the past few years had come from 

cell phone sales and contracts, and they were thus required to focus their effort on that,

and I think they mentioned a phone sales quota once also. They also said that battery

sales were important for a stores profit.

 I think the failure to setup in store Maker Spaces came from 3 combined factors:

1. Mismanagement and related short term thinking.

2. Lack of understanding of the size, momentum and culture of the maker community.

3. The domination of smart phones and tablets in the computer and electronics category,

and the large number and variety of competing stores and web sites selling those items.

 

Computer and electronics culture went through a strange shift over the last 20 years.

For most of the main stream there was a strong shift away from DIY and a focus on

ever more powerful and easy to use entertainment focused devices, such as XBox and

social media focused smart phones. Starting about 7 years ago in somewhat of a backlash

the Maker community started gaining steam,  and became a pretty large movement by about 4 years ago.

Since that time Kickstarter and the rise of hardware startups have played a major role in connecting 

the mainstream with the Maker community. Understanding those trends was clearly beyond

the capability and motivation of the Radio Shack executives, and so they chose a predictably losing strategy

of focusing on smart phone sales, while simply ignoring the entire rest of the store. They did start stocking

some Maker items like Arduino's and Schmart boards, but far too late and with far too little emphasis.

 Even now their bankruptcy restructuring strategy involves putting a Sprint store inside every Radio Shack.

That means that Sprint is certain to absorb the remains of Radio Shack within the next few years,

because Radio Shack has literally no strategy or marketing at all for selling anything but smart phones.

[Joe ODonnell]

 It's important to note that not only has Radio Shack declared bankruptcy, but also that several other large electronics retailers

have also gone out of business over the past 20 years, like Media Play, and also various concerns about the health of Best Buy

have circulated recently as well. 

 I think there are 3 reasons for this, internet sales, the centralization of electronics manufacturers and corporations in general in the US and allies,

and the decentralization of electronics makers and businesses in general in China. While Apple, Walmart and Samsung centralized

brick and mortar large store selling and manufacturing opportunities, the internet and the business ecosystem in China decentralized them.

Thus while Apple and Samsung first captured most of the smart phone market, they are now dominating only the upper part,

and Chinese upstarts like Blu are taking internet sales by storm. Radio Shack had similarities to the 'department stores' of decades ago,

which were out maneuvered in the US both business wise and politically by the big box stores like Walmart, Target and Amazon's internet 'big box.'

 The 'big box' large corporation approach now dominates most of business in the US, from manufacturing, to retail to restaurants to you name it.

Kickstarter was something of a backlash to that, but is still a pipsqueak compared to the big boxes. Modern China is fairly new to the free market

world, and thus has much less large corporation geared regulations and the like, and is more of a wild west frontier of constant intense

competition. Because of that, the $35 Arduino's that Radio Shack was selling can be bought and shipped all the way from China for

about $3. Yes, that's more than 10X less than Radio Shack was charging.

 Though Radio Shack was squeezed out from the 2 sides of the big boxes and China internet sales, it's fate is a harbinger not for smaller

corporations, but rather for the US large big box corporate system. This is because although large corporations and their government allies

have great power to influence markets in the US, that power can not stand against consumer goods that cost 10X less.

 This will ultimately be a victory not for Chinese business, but for the endless power of decentralized competition to constantly lower

prices, and to thereby continually push the necessary speed of innovation faster, in order to keep making new electronics sales.

 What that means is that the future doesn't belong to massive corporations that are simply too big to move fast,

but instead to countless innovating individuals and small business, in a relentless buzzing swarm of competitive innovation.

 The future is Kickstarter, the future is Maker Spaces.

 A science fiction like scenario of world wide high tech innovative manufacturing in every garage from Cleveland to Cairo 

is the vision that has driven the Maker project that initiated the current 3D printing wave, the RepRap project:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RepRap_Project

The Maker movement is only still just getting started. Over the next 5-10 years there will be changes on a scale

that even now are scarcely imaginable. The economic and technical development trends are pointing

to a future of robots, augmented reality mobile devices, corner store 3d printing custom products of any and every type,

and AI driven radical advances in medicine.

 The best way to predict and preempt the future is to Make it.