Comment Re:The Canadian arm of the business is stil operat (Score 1) 294
Their angle was "in stock and in HAND today". They lost sight of that, their most valuable resource. instant availability. I dropped $300 on dx.com last month in a single order. That gets you a crapton of small electronics. But you have to wait for it. I'm still waiting on one of the packages to get here. Ignoring the fact that 80% of that stuff RS doesn't carry, if they did, it would have cost well over a grand.
I remember them putting out an open invitation for surveys last year, and I tried to explain that to them. But they were asking questions like "do you want more DIY stuff and kits". Those were radio shack's bread and butter earlier that they got rid of over time recently, but those actually needed to go away. I can get arduino clone boards for $16 that cost $65 at the shack. No one in their right mind plans to buy that locally. It costs way too much, and you don't need it today.
The classic view of modern Radio Shack being a battery store is actually quite keen. Batteries are the perfect example of something you need now. If they were to survive, they were going to need to identify and focus on items like that. Small items that they can sell at a modest markup that people need TODAY. Anyone that can wait for something will order it from China. But instead they listened to the people that were reminiscing about how they used to shop at Radio Shack, and though that returning to a 20 yr old business model that they'd left behind was a good idea.
It was not.