Hacker News Reader

I remember a story I heard about Microcenter. It was started in my hometown (Columbus, OH) by a Radio Shack store manager. When PCs were coming out, the store manager kept putting those PCs up at the front of the store. The district manager would come back and make him put it in the back. This went on for a bit until the store manager quit, took his best sales guy, and opened up Microcenter at the mall next door, selling PCs. They eventually took over the entire mall, before moving to another part of town, and then expanding to other towns. By the time Radio Shack figured out where things were going, things were too late.

I didn't know this years later, watching Young Sheldon ... that Incredible Universe was Tandy's attempt to get into the consumer electronics when Radio Shack's profit started falling, and that Tandy has a whole (very profitable) leather company. My SCA friends tend to know a lot more about Tandy Leather than they do about Radio Shack.

Fry's Electronics closed here in the west part of Phoenix, several years ago. Their shelves were starting to get bare and were selling things from consignment. It took a while for them to die, and I finally found out why: they were having trouble getting credit to buy inventory.

> Fry's Electronics closed here in the west part of Phoenix, several years ago. Their shelves were starting to get bare and were selling things from consignment. It took a while for them to die, and I finally found out why: they were having trouble getting credit to buy inventory.

In 2019, I was in San Jose for a business trip, and I was excited that there was a Fry's Electronics within walking distance of my hotel, so after work one day I walked over to it.

It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I went in there, and it was almost completely empty. Very few workers, most of the shelves had absolutely nothing on them, there were barely any workers. The walls that usually had a bunch of TVs were completely bare, they managed to still have a full shelf of PlayStation Classics, and like one little basket of USB cables.

I genuinely thought they might have forgotten to lock the front door after closing, and that I was accidentally trespassing, but nope: there was a person behind the register and I was able to buy a flash drive.

For what I can only assume are obscure financial reasons, Fry's kept their stores open for like a year after they'd effectively gone out of business.

Yeah that's what I figured, but it was really really weird when I was there. It is so odd to go to a giant decorated store in a nearly empty state. I don't think Backrooms was really a meme at that point, but that's the sort of vibe it gave me.

> Fry's Electronics closed here in the west part of Phoenix, several years ago. Their shelves were starting to get bare and were selling things from consignment. It took a while for them to die, and I finally found out why: they were having trouble getting credit to buy inventory.

I was going to do some of my 2019 Christmas shopping at the one and only Fry's in the Chicago area, but I walked inside and it looked like a bomb had gone off. Nothing was organized, lots of empty shelves, the cafe was closed, and I got a serious case of the heebie-jeebies and hightailed it out of there.

Google Street View shows it as it was in August 2019. As far as I know, the building is empty now.

And then there was TigerDirect, but that's a separate rant. I used to have three major computer shops within driving distance, but it's down to one now with MicroCenter.

> the store manager kept putting those PCs up at the front of the store. The district manager would come back and make him put it in the back

It's interesting and sad that RadioShack somehow managed to succeed and fail at least twice in computing, first in the 8-bit microcomputer era and second in the Tandy PC era. It seems like they failed in the build-your-own-cheap-PC era as well.

> I live in NYC now, and fortunately we still have Micro Center which is still fun, though I do worry that it might go the way of Fry's Electronics soon enough.

When Fry's died during (not because of) the pandemic, basically half the comments on articles were "oh no, what about Micro Center?" to which the immediate response was invariably "they're all completely packed" (partially due to the pandemic meaning everyone wanted better computer gear for WFH). During the height of the GPU shortage, it was often said that your best chance of getting a GPU was going to the nearest Micro Center. On all of my more recent trips, Micro Center has seemed to do pretty strong business.

Somehow, Micro Center does seem to have found a strong niche that makes it survive as a brick-and-mortar store in an increasingly online store (hell, Micro Center's website is pretty notorious for looking like a 90's webstore). Part of that is probably knowledgeable salespeople (something Fry's was known for lacking). And I think there's also a savvy psychological rationale behind its expansion policy--its stores always come across as just a bit too small, and its locations too few, but the flip side is that you don't have cavernous spaces you need to fill (like Fry's did).

Can confirm. Finally got the GPU for my new PC in 2020 by (first) showing up at Microcenter on days when deliveries were expected, then eventually joining a discord where people posted daily updates when stock actually showed up (once I got tired of driving a half hour there and back a few times).

In the end, a helpful discord member was already at the store, purchased a GPU for me, and held it until I could get there and buy it off him. Due to the shortage there was no risk of him stuck holding the "bag" but it was a huge favor from my end. Wasn't scalping but I still threw in an extra $20 just for helping out.

The Microcenter near me always seems busy. There's always a steady flow of kids(I see more girls than boys interestingly) with a cart full of PC parts and a fat grin.

I always check there first when I need some kit. I much rather drive over and get what I need same-day. Routers, adapters, deoxit, solder, PC parts, generic flash drives in bins at the checkout like they're candy.

Their electronics section leaves something to be desired, but where else can I just grab a Pi zero w to-go for 10 bucks or some random sensor I've been meaning to play with to add on to whatever I was already buying. I cant even be mad at the markup because it's so valuable to have same-day.

That and the old-school sticker from the salesmen for commission means they tend to actually be nerds looking to help and I'm always happy to slap the sticker on whatever I'm buying to give them a piece.

If you have a Microcenter in your neighborhood, give them some business. I can only describe the feeling like you're a kid walking into Toys R Us again.

> I live in NYC now, and fortunately we still have Micro Center which is still fun, though I do worry that it might go the way of Fry's Electronics soon enough.

Thank god for Micro Center. Bought a cheap first Gen Threadripper and a board for it, turns out the board needed a firmware update to get the CPU working. Called the Flushing Micro Center, asked if they could help me and They said "Sure thing! bring the CPU and board over, no cooler needed." Dropped it off and they called me back in three hours, board was ready. Amazon can't do that.

I also love spending a bit of time walking the aisles and always stop by the clearance table to scrounge for cheap fun stuff.

Its not just Amazon. Amazon's electronics catalog isn't even that great compared online retailers like Mouser, DigiKey and NewEgg for PC parts.

Yeah. I rarely, if ever, buy electronics components on Amazon. It's almost exclusively Mouser for me.

It has the added advantage that I can export the order lists as XML, to keep a little bit of an inventory. I think every electronics hobbyist knows how you tend to very quickly forget what components that you have on hand, from the lowest resistor to entire FPGA dev boards.

The good news is Microcenter seems to have found a niche that keeps them relevant. My local branch is always packed with people trying out new mechanical keyboards, buying new computer cases or monitors, and buying hobby electronics kits.

Hopefully tapping into the gamer & hobbyist markets keeps them afloat.

Sometimes you just want a resistor, but when you buy online, you generally have to buy them by the thousand, and then find a place to store the other 999 of them in your house somewhere. There is definitely room for local stores because the cost to ship something very small has a high floor.

I buy single components (usually two or three, to have spares for soldering etc.) that cost a few cents on Mouser all the time?

> I live in NYC now, and fortunately we still have Micro Center which is still fun, though I do worry that it might go the way of Fry's Electronics soon enough.

There are actually five in the metro area: Brooklyn, Queens, NJ, LI, and Yonkers. I live in biking distance of the Brooklyn store and drive past (stop at) the Yonkers one pretty frequently and find they’re both usually quite busy, so hopefully they’ll stick around.

I make a point of trying to buy from them because I value having a place nearby that employs actual purchasing staff so I don’t have to sort through junk and counterfeit products, and because I like having a place where I can deal in person, have things same day, return without shipping etc.

I have only been to the one in Brooklyn, and yeah usually there's a fair number of people in there.

It's kind of a pain in the ass for me to get there from my house by train, and I don't have a car, but I always make a point to visit there when I'm in the area (usually because I need to go to Lowes and/or Harbor Freight).

I agree that it's nice to not have to worry about counterfeits, and it's nice to be able to buy a microcontroller or a Raspberry Pi or something without have to wait for shipping.

> I understand it, it's really hard to compete with Amazon in today's environment, and I'm not judging anyone for using Amazon instead of buying from a store

I am. :-)

> I buy online too, and fundamentally these are for-profit businesses and I don't feel any obligation to give them charity.

You can also judge people for prioritizing profit over all else.

Even from a purely utilitarian-calculus perspective, it's a bit strange to me when people say "I wish we had X" but then "but I understand people need to make money". Like, if you wish you had X, then X has utility to you. Now, it may be that the amount you would pay for X is less than what was needed for X to survive, but that's not necessarily implied by the mere fact that X has to make money.

And that's leaving out all the other positive and negative utilities that come from these various choices. Like living in a town where you can go to a place and have interactions with people, or even just browse unfamiliar and interesting products, instead of just a big warehouse.

There isn't any reason not to judge people for doing things that you think make the world worse.

I'm not 100% sure what you're getting at.

I didn't mind paying a bit more for stuff at Fry's because it was directly available and I liked walking around the store, but I certainly had no plans of buying a product I wasn't already going to buy just to patronize Fry's. These stores, while I do like them, are not charities. I don't want to needlessly give them money for stuff if I don't want it. I am not going to directly donate to them either.

I agree that the experience does have some amount of value if I am reminiscing about these things, but fundamentally what gives me (and I suspect most people) the most value is simply lower prices, and I think these things are at odds.

Big fun stores like Fry's have overhead, and they have to pay for that overhead somehow, meaning that it is rolled into the prices. Amazon is more boring, leading to lower prices.

My point is essentially that there are enormous higher-order effects that are totally ignored by just focusing on the price of individual consumer transactions, and many of those higher-order effects are detrimental to our society.

Isn't this kind of a privileged perspective though? Not so much saying that something is lost, but judging people for shopping on Amazon (which you said in an earlier comment).

It's easy to say something like "there's more to life than prices!!!!!" when you're a yuppie software person on Hacker News making six figures with full benefits, but a large percentage (most?) of the population isn't as fortunate. Something being five percent cheaper can be a meaningful difference to those people, and I certainly cannot blame someone in that situation for prioritizing their finances over some nebulous completely undefined and arbitrary "greater good" that you seem to be hinting at.

Now, I am one of those software people who (generally) makes plenty of money, so you could reasonably judge me for shopping on Amazon and focusing primarily on prices. I don't know what to tell you; even if I make plenty of money, it's not infinite money, I still have to prioritize how it's spent, and again I just don't feel the need to try and optimize for some undefined greater good.

> I'm not judging anyone for using Amazon instead of buying from a store

Given Amazon's labor practices, maybe you should be.

I’m always amused about people criticizing Amazon’s labor practices since they are hiring people directly and based in the US and don’t share the same concern about labor conditions in China where all of manufacturing happens and where RadioShack got its products

> and don’t share the same concern about labor conditions in China where all of manufacturing happens and where RadioShack got its products

[Citation needed]

We can care about both things.

So exactly how buying from Radio Shack better than Amazon as far as labor practices downstream from their supply chain?

How many people working in China would find it a dream to work in an Amazon warehouse? I know about Amazon practices second hand from my step son who has both worked in an Amazon warehouse and as a driver.

There have been plenty of stories about small towns having labor shortages and having to increase wages to compete against Amazon warehouse pay because people would rather work there than at a fast food store, daycare, etc.

So because we can't fix every problem, let's do nothing instead. Got it.

Exactly what problem is being “fixed” by being concerned about Amazon workers and not mentioning the Chinese workers? Amazon pays its warehouse workers and drivers $20+ an hour. Radio Shack paid minimum wage + a 1-3% commission and a $5 spiff for signing customers up for a needless warranty. I mentioned earlier that I worked at RS back in the day.

Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43696747

That's where you didn't share the concern.

I mean, no not exactly.

Amazon is just one of the nails in the coffin, and if it didn't exist there are still 50 others holding it shut.

We've seen most retail stores fail to convert from a physical to mixed physical+online format.

The number of items a successful electronics store needs is huge. The small mall format wasn't going to work.

> We've seen most retail stores fail to convert from a physical to mixed physical+online format.

For a while, people were sure Barnes and Noble was doomed, but recently they've done a big turnaround, even opening new stores. Anecdotally, the ones I've been to in recent years do seem nicer and more attractive than previously. Maybe there's a lesson in how they were able to stay alive.

B&N hired James Daunt, former CEO of UK's successful Waterstones book stores. He de-corporatised the company, ripping out central control and management-by-metrics and giving managers and talented staff in each store the chance to build a more personal and local experience.

It helps that books have become Veblen lifestyle collectibles for (mostly) younger women, and there are entire subcultures on social media dedicated to promoting the lifestyle.

What distinguishes how Amazon treats their employees from any other logistics/retail employer?

Union busting? Piss bottles? Intrusive tracking with zero tolerance for shortfalls? Poor safety? Low pay?

That's rampant everywhere.

There are exceptions, but they make the rule and the exceptions only apply to direct employees so you have to dig, take time, do research, verify certifications/audits, spend more money, and wait longer, to truly avoid abusive companies.

Shopping at unionized Costco doesn't count for shit. That gallon of ketchup you bought was made by someone pissing in a bottle on a dangerous production line.

Please note: I'm not saying it's right. It is not right.

What I'm saying is that people SEEM to be saying "Amazon sucks brah <they clap their hands together like they're knocking dust off> I don't use 'em" and then they're shopping at Target, where the distribution centers and stores are filled with poorly-paid workers pissing in bottles in between safety stand downs because an unsupervised and poorly-trained worker died crushed between a manlift and a wall: https://www.sungazette.com/uncategorized/2024/11/muncy-targe...

If anyone wants to compete in the smug olympics, I'm the unholy lovechild of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps when it comes to only buying union-made/public benefit corporation/domestic/local products.

Simultaneously, I recognize that not everyone makes as much as I do so Walmart or Amazon may be their only option.