[TriLUG] Radio Shack: was Old Dog In Need of New Trick - Digital TV Recording

[Brian Henning]

I don't doubt that hobby electronics is still a tough market in this area.
However, without changing their consumer-electronics aspects, I think
RadioShack could probably afford to cut their profit margins on discrete by
packaging more units per package.  Who seriously only needs one LED anyway?
Or couldn't use the other four if the $1.99 package was a five-pack?

Granted I obviously know nothing about RadioShack's financials.  Maybe a
$1.99 package worth $0.75 instead of $0.15 is enough to break that part of
the bank.  Their Arduino stuff seems to be pretty competitively priced,
anyway.

Also, given that DigiKey can have an order in my home mailbox two days after
I place it really means I can just wait, most of the time...

~B

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On Behalf
Of Bill Farrow
Sent: Monday, February 10, 2014 11:53 AM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Radio Shack: was Old Dog In Need of New Trick -
Digital TV Recording

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 11:17 AM, Brian <lugmail at cheetah.dynip.com> wrote:
> source for components.  They'll have to stop charging $1.99 for a single
> ordinary 5mm LED to get there, though.

Opening a retail store to sell electronics components in this area
would be very risky financially. Sure, there is demand from the local
makers and do-it-yourself-ers, but you would have to charge a lot more
than the mail order places to cover rent and payroll. You would need
to carry a large amount of stock, some of which won't turn over for
very quickly at all.

How would you structure this type of business to make it profitable ?

I think that local hacker spaces could fill some of this niche. They
could stock kits and basic essential parts, with a self serve honor
system for purchasing at the space. I think Splatspace in Durham
already does this for electronics kits.

Bill
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