> What is actually stopping you from opening your own version of Fry's or Radio Shack right now?

Aside from the fact that this is not my area of expertise (I am a robotics engineer), I assume the same forces that made things difficult for those companies would making things difficult for me.

And as I said earlier I think the practice of private equity firms buying property is raising prices across the board and making things more difficult for everyone. That’s not a bogey man that’s a specific claim.

Whatever else you say about the perceived viability of those companies, they’re valuable for rapidly designing new products. That’s why Shenzhen and Tokyo have famous electronics markets.

Realistically expect a digital version or a VR version instead of manufacturing coming back. If you have the money to, support this project or one like it. It's a WIP. https://wokwi.com/ you can request features if you donate.

As for me I don't see anything wrong with buying from mouser. Radio shack and fry's were always out of the desirable or exotic parts.

I’m a robotics engineer. I build real, physical robots. Specifically right now farming robots. There’s no digital or VR version of a robot that’s going to grow food you can eat.

Buying from mail order is okay for off the shelf parts but what about custom parts like PCBs and machined parts? And what do you do when you get your mouser order and realize you forgot something important? Having options nearby just means more speed. And that’s what I’m talking about. We’re settling for slower speed than is possible and I don’t like that. They don’t settle for slow in Shenzhen I don’t see why we should.

I think the design may become digitalized, machined parts are still available in the us around me it is very popular. 3D printers fill in the other parts. However one of my friends was going to do cnc and he said the pay isn't that great and he needs to do really boring jobs for years before being promoted (my friend in nanotech said a similar thing he'd be stuck at QA at low wages). Might be why they're not coming in droves.

PCBs were never local in my life and I don't remember them to be. You could always make your own with a copper PCB, but now you can etch and use a 3d printer so that's actually gotten better. There's maker spaces by me as well.

I don't think there's ever been a better time to do these kinds of projects even compared any other "golden age" in my life. By the time Arduino was around these places were already dead.

Congrats on a cool job. I love seeing engineering.

>> What is actually stopping you from opening your own version of Fry's or Radio Shack right now?

We had...like 4 Radio Shacks in my not-very-large town in the 80's. I don't think we had enough electronics nerds to support that, I wonder as a chain what the internal struggle was to keep that line of business going.

They had all kinds of electronics alongside it - computers, RC cars, tons of radios and stereos. but by the late 90's and early 2000's they turned into just selling batteries, cell phones, service plans, power adapters...

I don't remember when, but at some point a buddy and I went in there to get some resistors or something for a project, and they no longer sold them.

There was higher margins on cell phones in the 90s. Then the cell phone companies decided to bring that in house, and all the third party cell phone sellers died. Radio Shack had a good solid but low growth business in all those components. They pivoted to cell phones on the strength of "you don't understand these complex cell phones, but we are the nerds that do", and did great until that business died and they had no backup. If they had continued to sell those components they would probably still be around, but they wouldn't have been nearly as profitable in the 1990s.

There are enough people who would like to have a local store for things like resisters (at 10x the street price if you mail order), 3d printer filament and other "nerd hobby" toys to support a new radio shack type store in most every city. However getting such a store started would be difficult.

I think specialty stores in general may be a null concept at this point. At the turn of the 20th century, specialty stores for every specialty could survive in any population center (and sometimes in less populous place) because the alternative was a Sears catalog that would sell it to you to be delivered 6-12 weeks after they received payment, all from some microscopic line drawing.

You paid a premium to buy from the store, for the privilege of being able to see the merchandise before spending.

Now, you can order it off of Amazon with one day shipping, after having looked at numerous high resolution color images, and probably a dozen Youtube videos as well, all to see if it is the product you want and need. And if it's not, chances are that it can be returned for a refund with little hassle.

They've nailed the ability to do the initial purchase online, and that's what would build loyalty for a specialty storefront, that's the one purchase where people often wouldn't dare mail order. That's the purchase where someone gives you word of mouth advertising.

This might even have been flipped on its head, where the stores that are still large enough to have survived until now have people coming into the showroom to see what they want, but then ordering the same model off of Amazon or where ever to get their volume discount. That couldn't have worked earlier, as the only company that might have the same products mail order was the same as the store front.

We live in an era where the only brick and mortars that could possibly survive are those that sell highly perishable goods (groceries) or products for which even next day shipping are too late (plumbing repair parts at hardware stores).