As part of their participation in the recent Maker Faire, Radio Shack is seeking your input on what type of DIY components and products you would like to see in their stores.
Leave a comment at this RS webpage with the top three DIY-focused parts, pieces, or products that you would like to be able to find in a RadioShack store. They’ll compile the results and get to work bringing in the top products to help make your projects bigger and better.
Your DP product related comments and suggestions to the Shack will be appreciated.
When this was posted on Hack A Day the general result was “too little, too late”. Personally I think they can’t compete any longer with the online stores, I would love a street store where I could actually see/feel things before I bought them and have that convenience, but I don’t think its going to happen.
Apparently she’s “one of many” DIY voices in Radioshack… riiight O_o
Interesting to see RS reaching out and the responses. I think we may be entering another period of DIY growth and that is a good thing all around. Clearly a online presence is key in this era of globalism and JIT, that said RS and many others were very successful in parallel with HeathKit and others in the 60’s and 70’s.
If RS can figure out a tie in with hackerspaces, Maker Faire, FIRST Robotics and others they might be able to create something really interesting.
Clearly in USA, STEM education issues would be a great beneficiary of these efforts.
It’ll be interesting to see if they can make this work. IMO they need to focus on some of the core stuff, like Arduino boards, sheilds, and maybe hobby servos and small steppers such, and on ‘glue’ parts, the basic support bits (logic chips, smt and through-hole components, etc) that we often need, but hate to pay $5 shipping on.
No need to stock it all in each store if they can have one Maker-oriented store in an area, with free or very low cost transport between stores (like auto parts stores, they’ll usually run someone down to the warehouse on the same day to get whatever you need, at no extra cost).
In Ireland/UK we have a chain store called Maplin which is very similar to RadioShack. It has been making all the same mistakes too. I used to go in there regularly… but the last few years it feels more like a novelty junk shop. They seriously need to start reinventing themselves too.
How about having all the components in the store needed to make a radio?
Radio Shack circa 1970 = 98% electronics components, 2% candy
Radio Shack circa 2010 = 2% electronics components, 40% cell phones, 20% chinese electronics, 38% “accessories”. … 0% candy (assholes)
How about more product for the developer real kits ARM/PIC…Then access to chips and other components in store and order into the store, geting the product in 24-48 hours no shipping. Get back to building and thinking. If I want cheap phones and drone toys I’ll got to bestBuy and WallMart.
they need to find the place wich ebay + sparkfun + mouser_farnell_similars + free samples & huge amounts of egarbage had left empty.
we all know were it is ;)
“..What are the top three products we could bring in to make your projects bigger and better?”
What three products would change Radio Shack to the DIY movement? The problem is that new products are always coming and going and I don’t want to be stuck to three products. Arduino has a lot of staying power and it may be a good product but I don’t want to be stuck to it.
Only three products won’t change Radio Shack unless there are a whole line of products that come with it.
I can’t afford to shop at many of the stores in the malls because the malls pass the rent onto the customer and I don’t consider Radio Shack as being low cost because they pay people to roam and ask me “Can I help you find anything?” I can’t tell you how many times I have walked out of Radio Shack because the salesman hovered and their expectations and blood pressure was higher than mine. And I don’t think Radio Shack is going to pay the rent and salespeople by selling resistors.
I think a lot of people have already told Radio Shack some very good ideas but they have to listen. The other thing is that I don’t know if the DIY movement is large enough to save all of the Radio Shack stores and the snap circuits are not enough to get people involved. They need to bring back the Science Fair 150 in 1 kits to help people learn electronics; they need more. They need to have classes for electronics like Home Depot or Lowes does for home / hardware in the United States.
There is a difference between having a website or a store to pretend you are in the game and being in the game. I’ve told them that because when I didn’t know what I was doing, I bought an iron from Radio Shack and it was too big to do a lot of soldering work so I bought a soldering iron online. In other words, it isn’t good enough to have a store to be in the game. You have to know what you are doing and it may involve them actually getting involved and trying to do surface mount soldering or solder pin headers to LCDs because not all of their equipment is right for the job.
You can copy what other stores sell or you can actually design products and get involved. Radio Shack use to sell computers. How about designing some chips for video or sound that the other companies don’t want to make?