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Comment by orionblastar | Hacker News Reader

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orionblastar·

Microcenter is what Radio Shack should have become.

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It was founded by two Radio Shack employees!

That explains a lot.

For reboot of US mainline electronics manufacturing, we need a video comparing US electronic parts retail with Shenzen electronic parts retail.

And we all watched Radio Shack run face-first into the same wall, over and over and over and over. The market was exploding and it was theirs to lose, and boy did they ever.

I worked at a CompUSA in high school and college. The money was around the PC sale, which was pretty high margin until around 1998/9. I’d come in in the morning before class to do freight… one time we built a pyramid of about 300 PCs.

It was a money machine until it wasn’t.

Radio Shack has to sell everything, couldn’t offer a good variety of devices, and didn’t have the staff to support people with complicated PC purchases. If cell phones blew up earlier radio shack would still be around.

I had a small PC Business. When the Internet Rebates came out with a free PC, we couldn't match that. However, the AOL or MSN monthly fee was $35 or $27 for dial-up. We had Brick.net for $10 a month and $500 to $700 mid-end PCs. We couldn't compete and went out of business.

Yeah that really killed the golden goose. Brick and mortar computer retailer and collapsing prices cant mix - you can’t cross sell high margin services and products with a $400-400 rebate purchase.

When I moved out of retail to professional internships, they were looking to enhance margins by selling candy and DVDs. Best Buy survived that era with appliances and TVs.

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