Incompetence destroyed this company. There's a maker revolution happening right now and they can't figure out how to harness it. Imagine if each radio shack was a hammarspace and had been adding tooling steadily for the last 5 years.
I remember the store nearest my house growing up having multiple AISLES of just power adapters and barrel connectors, etc, and it was a tiny store in a strip mall sandwiched between a Baskin Robbins and a Subway.
It was certainly a sad realization.
In both stores it was at least three aisles worth of things like components, perf boards, various breakout kits, enclosures, etc.
- Most of the cabling and audio components are out on the shopfloor, which is handy,
- They do tend to (always?) have a component counter at the back, which fronts onto their warehouse/storeroom space, where you can usually get what you need. I guess that stuff is too easily stolen to have out front.