[TriLUG] [more and more OT]: Hobby Parts for Electronics

[Dean Price]

I figured you were going to get your two cents sooner or later.

Dean Price
deano at price4.org
dprice153 at charter.net
dean.price at ctg.com


Stephen Hoffman said:
>
>      The reason RadioShack's selection of small electronics and parts has
> dwindled over the years is actually simple, MONEY.  As a former
> employee (by no means a disgruntled one), I have seen what the markup
> on consumer electronics is there.  From a business standpoint,
> RadioShack would love nothing more then to wipe out all the parts in
> the store taking up valuable shelf space and sell nothing but
> cellphones and satellites (the highest profit margin).  Not that
> parts don't have an extremely high margin, the SPST momentary switch
> someone mentioned retailed for around 2.00 but I assure you it cost
> no more then $.10 and probably even closer to $.05.  Not a bad
> return, the only thing is you have to sell dozens of them to get the
> same return as one cigarette lighter adapter for a cellphone (Retail
> $29.99, warehouse $5).  And cellphones; they had a store cost of
> maybe $30 and retail for say $99, but the kickback from the provider
> (verizon, sprint, alltell) is $200 for every customer they sign, PLUS
> they get a percentage of your monthly bill from the provider until
> you cancel.  So just one cellphone costs $30 to RS, but they
> instantly produce $300 in revenue and a profit of say $250 after you
> pay the bills plus you get a few pennys each month from it.
>      Sadly, I occasionally neglected a parts customer to make the
> cellphone sale (we were commission based), even if I knew right where
> the part was, but you were the "ask too many questions" type.
>      Matt, don't be fooled, you can still get the 6.5536 MHz crystal, but
> no salesman making $5.15/hour is going to drop everything he is doing
> to look it up in the commercial catalog for 4.99 (of which he only
> gets 6% of).  Don't quote me on this, but I believe you can even
> still get mercury switches from said catalog (just raises a bunch of
> eyebrows when you do).
>      So when Jim calls it "Radio Shaft", I have to agree with
> him...somewhere down the line, you're gonna get it from them.
>
> My $.02
>
> Steve
>
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