Electronics has always been a tough business to survive in. It moves fast.
During the 1980s, when I was in my DIY prime, Radio Shack was a place that I wanted to see succeed but they always found new ways to make me dislike them. First, they charged way too much for discrete components. I realize that they probably had to to make up for their single packages and the shelf space they occupied, but if they simplified their commodity packaging, such as bulk bins, they could have offered them cheaper. As it was I would wait until I had time to drive across town to buy from a real electronics supplier and still come out with significant savings over cost at Radio Shack.
Second was Radio Shacks stinginess with their catalog. A lot of stuff that they sold was not in the store. It had to be ordered. Hard core DIY guys would have rather ordered parts themselves than deal with Radio Shack clerks. We simply did not trust the advice of clerks that said resistors reduce bandwidth and that is why Radio Shack stereos do not use them. True story.
I wanted Radio Shack to succeed but instead they seemed hell bent on being the most expensive 7-11 in the electronics world that they could get away with.
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