Thinking of opening electronics store in Chicago...

[AndyJ]

Hi all! A question for anyone from Chicago!

I do electronics for a living and hobby, like many of you. I'm thinking of opening an electronics store to cater to the hobbyist and student markets in Chicago. Would you make use of it, even for "oh crap!" deadline stuff?

Lets say it had:

 

•     Fully stocked walls of passives, priced by the inch of tape.
•     Very reasonable prices (Ain't nobody want to pay $5 for 5 resistors!)
•     Full stock of Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, ICs, programmers, etc.
•     On-site laser cutting/engraving
•     Classes/meetups and contests

How often would you visit? How much might you spend? Just trying to gauge! Thanks.

[EEVblog]

I don't know anything about Chicago of course, but how would you compete with the big catalog distributors like Digikey and Mouser?
Presumably in the US you can get parts from them for same or next day like you can here in Oz with Element 14 and RS.

Here in Oz, the retail electronics stores cannot stay open by just selling electronics components. They have to sell all the retail farting novelty gadgets to the general public.

I've always been of the opinion that a bricks and mortar retail store is a mugs game, and has been for a long time now.
Take Adafruit for example, doing awesome business selling bits and bobs. But they don't have a retail shop front, even though they could easily do so being based in New York city.

Dave.

[AndyJ]

Hi Dave. Big fan!

Your response is exactly what I'm looking for. Indeed, I can't hope to compete with Mouser or Digi--but I don't aim to. What led me to this idea was how many times over the past few years I've had an idea or needed something quickly, and just not been able too due to not having parts locally.

When you're down to calling the local TV repair place to ask if they have solder paste, things get frustrating, and for someone like myself next-day (or god forbid, same day) shipping is too expensive. Maybe not for a large company, but enough to make a small one think twice.

To me the brick and mortar store represents more then just a place to get your parts. You can come in, chat, ask questions about your design, meet up, show off, and get second opinions. I wish I had a place like that by me when I was starting out, and it's what led me to this idea!

[Mcfly]

Well, personally i would give you all my money if you had one based near my house      (im 16 years of age)
The only electronics store that i had growing up was radioshack.  And we all know how that is!   
The employees stick their heads up your ass if you so much as glance at the phones and "audiophile grade" cables

The only thing that we have is a surplus store.  They arent even stocked as advertised with anything more than a 2n2222...   
They get their income selling huge ass caps, cores, relays, and ham antennas.. 
You may want to give yourself a wider niche, so you don't have to resort to selling phones and fart toys.

If you do choose to do it, make sure you also become an electronics counselor for the boy scouts in your area.  Because that would be totally awesome

[EEVblog]

Your response is exactly what I'm looking for. Indeed, I can't hope to compete with Mouser or Digi--but I don't aim to. What led me to this idea was how many times over the past few years I've had an idea or needed something quickly, and just not been able too due to not having parts locally.

Sure, I'm in the same position sometimes and drop by my local Jaycar store down the road for some parts.
But here is where you have to do the math...
My Jaycar store is a few minutes away, walking distance if it came to that.
The other stores are Altronics and the Element 14 trade counter, both about a 45 min round trip at least.
Any further than an hour round trip and I wouldn't bother at all.
I go to those less frequently than Jaycar, and Jaycar is not very frequent to begin with!
I'd spend an average of $10-$20 at most on each visit.

So, you have to ask, how many potential customers are within a hours drive?
And how many of those would you need per month on an average spend to at least break even after all expenses?

Not saying it's not doable, but I thin kif you do the math, you'll find that it most likely not viable 

To me the brick and mortar store represents more then just a place to get your parts. You can come in, chat, ask questions about your design, meet up, show off, and get second opinions. I wish I had a place like that by me when I was starting out, and it's what led me to this idea!

Indeed, but that may not pay the rent 

Have you thought about putting your enthusiasm into a Hackerspace instead?
Maybe one that also sells some parts as well?

Dave.

[AndyJ]

You bring up very good points. I really can't answer how many people would be within "acceptable" distance of the store, but I've contacted the main Hackerspace up here so I'm hoping to get a good idea. Chicago itself has many people and many electronics schools, which I had planned to contact.

[FenderBender]

Okay I edited it a bit to organize my thoughts.

I think we need more electronics stores. However, I can see it being difficult to survive because electronics is still a pretty niche market, though it is pretty popular. Making a business out of it may be tough, but I think you can do it.

Here are a couple of things that came to mind:

1.) Location. I've seen great stores (not necessarily electronics) die because they weren't easy to access or were barely noticeable. Now of course, trying to get a building on a main street in busy Chicago will surely not be cheap, but it may be your answer. A large volume of traffic can mean more people dipping into your store.

2.) Sell it. If someone was to glance at your store for 3 seconds as they walked by, you'd want them to say "Wow that looks interesting. Maybe I should go inside". In the same manner, there have been great stores that look like shit on the inside and outside and they are very uninviting. Even if you think engineers are not the flower types, put some nice plants outside. Keep the windows clean.  Make people have no option but to come in because it looks so nice. Examine current stores as models. Take the Apple store for example. They are very clean and elegant. Or I like the idea of a Starbucks-like or Barnes&Noble-like electronics store: A store that I want to go in...and stay in! Perhaps a lounge area, smooth jazz music in the background while brewing coffee. Thinking a bit wildly here but that would make me want to shop there. Good lighting is very important. Make people feel at home.

3.) Service. Why do I hate Radioshack? Because they don't care about you! There's only one guy there (kind of looks like Jim Williams) who actually knows what he's talking about. The other workers are just plain nimrods. And they want to steal your money with "protection plans".  If you choose to hire people,  it would be helpful to hire perhaps EE students or people that actually have a solid foundation with electronics. I think that is very important. The Apple workers might not know everything but they are generally very helpful.

4.) Good products and well organized. Of course if the products are garbage, then everything else is a waste. Don't be like Radioshack and stock parts from unknown suppliers made in Nowhereville, China. Equally as important is organization. I have actually been to a few "real" electronics supplier shops and my biggest complaint is that it was impossible to sort through the parts because of lack of organization.

I think you should have the main section of the store dedicated to "standard" parts. That means all the passives you could ever want, op-amps, comparators, logic, some microcontrollers, voltage regulators, transistors, etc. And then another small section with "cutting edge" parts. These would probably be mostly chips. Keep a small supply of these. These would be things that people could buy and tinker with if they wanted to. But the stock would be due to change.

In this "lounge" area I talked about, you should have a few reference books that people can look at if they want. A copy or two of the ARrt of Electronics. Some other design books. Have the latest subscriptions to some EE magazines or Make: or whatever. Perhaps they can drink some coffee while they do this.


5.) Specialize. I don't know what exactly this would be but classes or a "club" would be awesome. Perhaps Monday: Beginner-intermediate classes, Wednesday- advanced classes, Thursday- Show off your projects day.

I think you should try to develop some sort of curriculum. I know you would be a business not a school so you'll have to balance this one yourself.  After you teach the class, provide the people with some material on how they can do it at home. All the parts and equipment needed would be available at your store. A few weeks into the course and they'll be dying to buy an oscilloscope from you. Hehe.

[c4757p]

You need to specialize in some way. Provide a service that someone else does not. Not sure what that would be. Perhaps some sort of education.

Hell yes. Electronics stores should have classes like the craft stores do. At all different levels - you'll turn a lot of people off if it's just "how to flash an LED". Some "how to repair" classes would be nice too.

[AndyJ]

Having classes would be the goal, along with simple meetups and contests. Basically, we'd want to be part of the community!

[c4757p]

It's a shame there aren't many decent electronics stores around anymore. Mouser/DigiKey might be cheaper but I miss the experience of the physical store once in a while. There's a little electronics store an hour away and I went there and felt like I was a kid again.

I'd probably be a frequent customer at your store if I lived in Chicago. Sadly I live in the armpit of New York State instead, upstate...

[AndyJ]

It's a shame there aren't many decent electronics stores around anymore. Mouser/DigiKey might be cheaper but I miss the experience of the physical store once in a while. There's a little electronics store an hour away and I went there and felt like I was a kid again.

I'd probably be a frequent customer at your store if I lived in Chicago. Sadly I live in the armpit of New York State instead, upstate...

What a coincidence, our first satellite branch was going to be in "Armpit, NY!"

But I appreciate your comment. Those feelings of being in a store are exactly why I wanted to open it. Nothing quite like it.

[FenderBender]

Indeed. Electronics can be bewildering. Human interaction is what people crave, assuming the store owner hasa grip on all things electronics which I'm sure you do with an endevour like this! 

[Conrad Hoffman]

No, failure in the making- run! I've seen people do exactly what you're talking about and they quickly go out of business even with good location and good stuff. You can't sell at a price anybody will pay because you can't support the brick and mortar store front. The percentage of people interested at this level isn't high enough in any one area to make a go of it. The margins aren't high enough. You'll have the same problem as the people teaching knitting classes and other crafts. Basically the audience is cheap and unless you want to eat noodles and make $1.50 an hour, the economics don't work. Even our local surplus place went out of business. All the hobby stores have gone out of business. Oddly, we do have a vintage audio and turntable shop that seems to be making a go of it- you have to ride a wave and know when to exit.

[EEVblog]

Ok so that's just one example but there are heaps of others gone by the wayside I could name and a trip through old electronics magazines would show how the world has changed.

That reminds me. I have 40+ years of electronics magazines sitting beside me that are begging for videos...

Dave.

[AndyC_772]

If I need components for a project, I can put in an order with Farnell and have them delivered free the next day. I might consider buying them from a retailer instead, but unless you have every single part I need sitting on the shelf, I still need to mail order the rest - and then I might just as well mail order the whole lot and save myself a trip. You'll never compete with the major catalogue companies on range, and that's a deal breaker IMHO.

Much as it pains me to admit it, electronic components aren't a type of product that really needs to be available retail at all. There's no value in being able to pick up and handle a transistor before taking it home; everything I could possibly need to know about it is right there on the data sheet, and the actual product is exactly the same regardless of where I buy it. You have just the same problem as a music & video retailer - you just can't differentiate yourself from the competition when you're selling the exact same branded product as everyone else.

There are some things you could try, though. Tools immediately spring to mind; I'd like to be able to see a range of good quality pliers, cutters, soldering irons and so on, because it's difficult to judge quality or even size from a photo in a catalogue. Cable and wire fall into this category too, along with enclosures. Maybe switches and connectors too... stuff that's available in a range of physical sizes, where being able to see it up close & personal helps in the design process.

These are small ticket items, though, and you're only going to make pocket change selling them. If you sell higher value products (scopes, power supplies, signal generators and the like), you'll need to be price competitive with online resellers, and that means narrow margins. I'm not going to buy a $5000 scope from you if it's $4000 delivered in a week from somewhere else. I might buy a $400 scope from you, but you're not going to be making much on that either.

Here in the UK we have a chain of electronics retailers called Maplin, who have been around for years. They started out doing mail order, and their catalogue used to be a treasure trove of all manner of components and other cool stuff. It was also an invaluable reference book - it included copies of the pinout and other data for all the ICs they sold.

Over time, rather than growing the mail order business, they opened more retail stores, yet relegated electronic components to a small counter at the back. Nowadays they mostly sell computer parts and accessories. I sometimes pop in if I need, say, a type of wire or connector which I don't have in stock, but that's about it. The highest value item I've bought from them all year is a can of compressed air, and even that was only because I needed it in a hurry.

Personally I'd run a mile if I were you. Much as I'd love to see a retailer offering components, professional quality tools, test equipment and so on, I wouldn't expect to ever actually spend much there. Sorry.

[mikeselectricstuff]

What led me to this idea was how many times over the past few years I've had an idea or needed something quickly, and just not been able too due to not having parts locally.

Needed or wanted?  While the  idea of being able to nip down to the shop is nice, how often can you not wait a day for mail-order?
I often do work projects on insane timescales (e.g. forty SMD boards each with 200 parts designed and built in less than a week), and I can only think of maybe 2-3 of times in the last couple of years where it would have been very useful to have got some parts same day - generally when I've missed a part off a Farnell order or received the wrong part pr package (e.g. 500 SOT-23 PICs supplied loose in a bag instead of tape). 
However the huge variety of electronic parts available nowadays means it isn't realistic to stock a good enough range or volume to be worth doing. The hobbyist market is just too small to ever be the  viable business it was 20-30 years ago, and the professional market is usually organised enough to not need it, or can pay for stuff to be biked over if necessary.
I have an RS trade counter a 30 min round-trip away but rarely use it - OK they don't stock much electronics stuff but even if they did I doubt I'd use it more often.  Less so now they don't open Sat mornings.
I also have Rapid Electronics about a 3hr round trip away but have never been there - a couple of times I might have if I could have sent someone else. 

General retail electronic components will never be viable other than as a counter on the side of a mail-order warehouse.

There is a small potential market for Arduino type stuff as a sideline to a bigger shop - I know someone who is doing this with some success, and this is combined with classes. 

[mikeselectricstuff]

That reminds me. I have 40+ years of electronics magazines sitting beside me that are begging for videos...

Dave.

And that further reminds me. We in Australia were pretty well set for electronics magazines. Especially given the population here. We had Electronics Today International, Australian Electronics Monthly Silicon Chip and Electronics Australia and a few magazines that appeared sporadically.  Electronics Australia in various guises ran for over 75 years. The Wikipedia entry can be seen here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_Australia

Only Silicon Chip survives. To me that pretty much sums up the state of play.

And on the subject of old magazines. Dave, I would like to see that.

Ditto in the UK, I believe the last surviving title which over the years absorbed Practical Electronics, Everyday Electronics and ETI is no longer going, leaving Elektor as the  only remaining paper magazine.

[steve30]

I'd welcome a decent electronics shop in my area, but I've really no idea if there would be much demand for one. But I am many thousands of miles away from Chicago so can't comment on that area.

There are at least 5 Maplin stores in my county. I do use them now and again, but they are hardly worth it for components. They are too expensive, very little choice, and very little stock. Unless I'm passing and need something which they happen to stock, then its not worth the bus fare to go there.

Here in South Yorkshire, we do have a great little independant shop called Bardwell's, which has been around for donkeys years, and there prices are probably better than Maplin, but again, unless I'm going past, its not worth the bus fare, when I can get stuff shipped for the cost of a postage stamp or even less.

If you are confident that you can get the customers and can either stock (or have the ability to easily order) parts that everyone wants, then it might be worthwhile. If it was local to me I would certainly visit. But do remember that mail order has most of the market.

[steve30]

That reminds me. I have 40+ years of electronics magazines sitting beside me that are begging for videos...

Dave.

And that further reminds me. We in Australia were pretty well set for electronics magazines. Especially given the population here. We had Electronics Today International, Australian Electronics Monthly Silicon Chip and Electronics Australia and a few magazines that appeared sporadically.  Electronics Australia in various guises ran for over 75 years. The Wikipedia entry can be seen here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_Australia

Only Silicon Chip survives. To me that pretty much sums up the state of play.

And on the subject of old magazines. Dave, I would like to see that.

Ditto in the UK, I believe the last surviving title which over the years absorbed Practical Electronics, Everyday Electronics and ETI is no longer going, leaving Elektor as the  only remaining paper magazine.

There's still Everyday Practical Electronics. I've read through a few recent issues which are in my college's library. Seems pretty decent, though many of the constructional projects are reproduced from Silicon Chip.

I've recently started buying Elektor. For some reason I never bothered with electronics magazines until recently.

[JuKu]

I get Element14 next day delivery directly to my door. I don't bother to go downtown much for standard parts. Very seldom would I go there for resistors and such to get them the same day - and nobody is going to make a living selling 0.01$ resistors anyway! But there are things I prefer to buy from a real store:

- All my tools, unless it is a very specific tool. I want to get a feel for it and see if it "looks good".
- Wires and cables: All catalog pictures look the same, but again, I'fd like to get a feel
- Enclosures
- Odd items, that I didn't know existed before seeing them in a store (in other words, you want to keep an eye for sites like GoodLuckBuy, eBay and such)

Still, electronics is not that popular hobby and competition from web stores is brutal. Average customer spending 50$ (to be generous) leaves you $10 (again, being generous). You need awful lot of traffic to make a living...

[Psi]

•     Very reasonable prices (Ain't nobody want to pay $5 for 5 resistors!)

This maybe tricky because you do need to make money.

However, you could price them so it's obvious that buying a single resistor isn't value for money by also selling larger packs for cheap.

If they want to pay $1 for one resistors they can.
Or they can buy 10 for $1.30   or 100 for $5  etc..

It's only the hobbyists who begrudge paying $1 for one resistor. Mum/Dad/ or the general public don't care, they just want one resistor and $1 is cheap to them.
A hobbyist is happy to buy 10 or 100 resistors even when they only need 1 for a project.

And before you ask, yes, you do get people with little-to-no electronics knowledge buying components. Don't ask me why, but it happens more than you think.
I see it all the time when at the local electronic store here. So you might as well take the money if they want to pay $1 for one resistor

[ptricks]

An electronics parts store can work but you cannot run it like it would have been run 10 years ago. Companies like Mouser make it hard for a local company to compete. You cannot undercut the big guys in price so you are going to have to get the customers by offering a local service that does something they cannot.

One option to consider it to keep low stock levels but tell customers you will order whatever they want and you can have it either the next day or two days later. Why wouldn't customers just order it themselves ? Because a lot of places have a minimum order , or charge a lot for shipping and I have run into the problem of the shipping costing more than the parts several times. If you can get enough routine customers, you can charge a slightly higher price for the parts and do orders for multiple customers combined into one order.  This is especially true if ordering parts from China suppliers. There are a lot of boards and modules available on ebay really cheap but a lot of people do not want to pay extra shipping cost and without the extra shipping it can take 2 weeks+ to get an order. Combine a bunch of customer orders and get the stuff in 2 days and you will have a lot of people wanting to order things.

Something else you can consider offering is a pcb service where you gather up multiple orders and ship them to a be made in bulk . I know some will say they can just do that themselves, but even with all the online  stuff , some people still prefer to work with someone face to face.


 

[Psi]

Yeah.

You could also stock electronic stuff from hobbyking.

Their stuff is real cheap to start with so adding your markup wont make the stuff overpriced.
It would be very convenient to have somewhere local where people can buy hobbyking electronics from without any shipping delay.
(As long as your markup isn't crazy).

It's a good idea because in the world of RC heli/planes/quadcopters you often break stuff and need replacement motors/batteries/ESCs right away. Waiting 2 weeks is really annoying.

[SeanB]

Locally I had ( 20 years ago) Hamrad, A1 Radio, Ron Tomlin and Basic Electronics. Only survivors are A1 and Ron Tomlin, and even so they are struggling, only surviving because they have paid for premises, and a still loyal customer base. I buy from them when I can, as they are the only local suppliers left, the alternative for most being RS, who are still around, though they did close the trade counter locally because it was not viable ( and I did support it because they did have the look and touch, it did make me buy tools and such, especially random components that they had in the shelves, even at the then high prices) to keep it for the volume. the biggest problem of retail is the twin evils of having good staff ( not cheap and good ones are hard to keep, they will be poached by your competition) and paying for the shop and all the associated costs like power, water, rates and other services and the associated overheads like security and insurance.

[Mechatrommer]

this is from my observation and having opened a small retail (other stuff) for a short period. when you want to open up a retail...
1) you dont think of yourself or what you like or "think" other people will like from your small room in your house.
2) you need to establish and have a figure on who and how many your target customers will be. how? go out, look around ask people, as many as you can get.
3) you are going to sacrifice you time for that. you dont expect you open it up and have your workers run it for you. the more time you spend for it the more success rate it should be.
4) you are going "professional" way, it means you have to do anything to survive even if its what you dont like.
5) not just "professional" way, but your are going "entrepreneurshit" meaning you will be pouring money out of your pocket and your bank's debt. so think twice, thrice of even 10th times, mistake is not an option, esp if its "one way trip".
6) above all. you must be "selfless", i mean in other word... you dont expect to get what you want. relying on few local hoobiests is simply delusional imho.

btw my retail seems to go down very steep, i think because i violate rule #3. i think i spent too much time foruming. !@$%$#%^#$ but since its not a "one way full blast" trip and only small'ish investment, "pulling up" will not lose me an arm and leg. fwiw, my bros too they are in auto car accessories business but since that business is quite hot, so they are not running out of business and customers up until now.

back to local ee shop. i need to pray to santa claus if i want to find the simple LM324 opamp in our local shop, let alone the arduino. they got all the fancy mosfets and stuffs that i figured out later to be usually used by other ee repair shops or in many products in local market. they got fans, lamps, and other gadgets for home ee improvement stuffs other than the mentioned "farting toys", even the coax cable is only for our local tv decoder unit 75ohm white fat type, you will need to pray to unicorn if you want the 50ohm coax big or small regardless, let alone coax used by rigol probe. so those who survived are the one who look around and find out whats the "demands" are. and where "MEAN" is the mostly used stuff in techical engineering, thats not going to work in business. business works with "MOD" the largest group. if you use a rare car you are going to have a hard time looking for parts, whats piling up around me are parts for our local "national" crap products. cant really blame the retailers et al, they need to survive btw, so i'm "the special kind" is on my own

edit: one of my bro is a car audiophool sound blast maniac, if he has to rely on it alone i think he will spend most of his shop time sitting watching the dust fly away, inevitably he has to sell car tinting service, dumb accessories and car's fart toys. otoh my other bro is doing car's sticker and just that, he still survive so go figure. i believe its his sidejob for doing signboard contract jobs (using stickers) thats helping to pay.

[8086]

Someone mentioned Maplin.

Maplin is a good example of what happens on the high street to niche stores. they ended up filling their stores with all sorts of multicolour LED strips and various usb powered novelties. Their components are almost an afterthought, and though I have three stores within driving distance, there is rarely stock of the part I need in any of them.

In short, if you are going to do this, you should definitely NOT try and have a store with a slight hacker vibe. You should have a hackerspace with tools that most people can't have at home (cnc, milling, etching, etc) and classes on how to use them. And you can sell parts for projects that you can 'hold peoples hand' and let people complete using your equipment.

An electronics store is sure to fail (I'm sorry, but it's just the truth) - but make it something different, and you might have a winner. But even then, I wouldn't be so sure. Electronics just isn't a mainstream high street thing. Stores have closed, and the ones that remain aren't really electronics stores anymore.

[grumpydoc]

I don't think I'm going to say anything much different to the previous comments. I don't think a shop selling purely components has a chance.  I do occasionally pop into the local Maplins but to be honest I try not to and when I do go there isn't usually a queue at the components counter.

It might have been useful once for the odd item left off a Farnell order but these days I find ebay more useful, especially if I need NOS stuff, for small orders. It's (as others have observed) impossible to have the range to be useful and margins are going to be razor thin.

I think Maplin's survives on the gadgets, and possibly cheap computer hardware, though to be honest they mostly sell overpriced tat so I avoid them for computer stuff unless I'm really in a bind.

[tom66]

I've bought a few things from Maplins. If they sold decent low ESR capacitors, like Panasonic FC/FM/FR, then I would be down there probably every second week. Add some other SMPS components and I'd make it every week. But, at the moment, I combine everything into one Farnell order, and pick it up at the Leeds trade counter. 5 mile bus ride from uni vs 1 mile walk to Maplins.

[mamalala]

I think another problem today is the sheer amount of parts available. 20 or 30 years ago there wasn't such a wide range. Some E series for resistors, standard transistors, a bunch of 74XX or 40XX logic, plus some specials like small CPU's, SRAM, etc. There has been a lot of electronic stores "back in the time", because it was rather simple to set one up with a range of parts that most hobbyists use.

Then they slowly degraded. Rarely did they extend their product range. And why should they, they had limited space after all. We also had  lots of surplus shops around, pretty much all gone nowdays. Electronics was quite a hobby, but with the advent of more and more SMD stuff, it became harder for people to get started. I mean, lets face it. The interesting parts are pretty much all SMD today.

And now we have such a big range of parts, it's simply impossible for a shop to keep up with all that. Plus, the internet. 20 or 30 years back there was little available in terms of online shopping. Today you can buy pretty much everything online. That in turn has led to a vast number of small resellers online. Each competing with others, leading to really low prices. China has opened up as well, making stuff even cheaper.

As much as i would like to see more brick&mortar electronic shops, i simply can't imagine how they should manage to stay alive. It makes little sense to drive to a shop, only to find out that they don't have most of the parts i need. Sure, they could order them. But what would be the benefit for me as a customer then? I mean, in that case i can order the stuff myself.

Instead of focusing on a shop for parts, i think it would be much more worthwhile to set up some shop for workspace, courses, etc., and having the possibility to buy parts and kits as a secondary thing to that. A place were people can come and use tools for a small fee. Where they can get help of a/a few professionals. Exchange ideas, work together on projects, maybe get some lectures, etc. Because that is something the internet can not do that good.

Set up a place with a bunch of tables, soldering irons, measurement gear. A small CNC, a good drill press, stuff to tap threads into metal, etc. Maybe a small reflow oven as well. Provide a place were people can do stuff that they can't do at home, due to lack of tools and/or skills. Were they can meet and work together, etc. That would be really useful, i think.

Greetings,

Chris

[nukie]

I got a battery powered device it didn't come with an ac adapter, I went to major electronics store to look for one. Guess what? It was too expensive, I hop online and had one shipped to me, I could have bought 3 at the price the shops was selling. And no it isn't cheap dangerous smps adapter.

It's quite sad when I could spend my time looking around for parts in small baskets physically but now I am resort to clicking and online carts.

I like real stores I could visit and the owner actually greet me by my name. There's one Rockby I would drive an hour roundtrip to pickup my components, but this is customer loyalty and support. Which takes years to gain, to be able to survive you gonna have a huge warehouse, forget about having a shop. You only need an counter for parts pickup, most of your sales will be online and stock the right stuff and you might survive the internet age.

[Mechatrommer]

I went to major electronics store to look for one. Guess what? It was too expensive, I hop online...

this is mostly the part where customers do not understand. 1/3 or 2/3 of the products price will go to you guess what? paying the bills, workers and that "brick and mortar" place, its not free. razor thin margin is fine! what if you cant pay your workers and the rent? where will you get the money to cover that? your (the business owner) own expense! (or debt).

so if you want to help out brick and mortar shop, prepare yourself psychologically to pay higher (you are doing social work to help pay the workers, the owner and the rent and the business generally). as much like all of you, i wish i can buy local, i dont mind if its a little bit expensive, i can save much more time, time is gold, but i live in small town at most 15 minutes drive, for bigger city 1-2 hour drive rant time can be an issue so YMMV. buying locally, i can get it right away, i can test and feel it on the spot, i can return it back if its faulty with little hassle compared to online shop. but in reality, thats not happening, everybody too much concern with how much money going out their pocket. everybody going cheap cheap, go china. as much as we hate suicidal products, but we are buying from them, thats the reality the dragon is waking up.

[GK]

Aztronics here in SA seems to be staying alive somehow with two store fronts (one in the city and another not very far out) and have been around for ages. Pretty much just an electronics parts and "kitset" supplier. I seldom go there though as I live down south and they aren't open either Saturday or Sunday. Bit less of a population here in Adelaide than in Chicago............................

http://www.aztronics.com.au/

[JuKu]

You should have a hackerspace with tools that most people can't have at home (cnc, milling, etching, etc) and classes on how to use them.

Now, that is something I would spend money on. A place with machines, and a membership fee, an hourly fee and paid classes, and I would be a member, if fees are reasonably at all. Actually, there are such places in US (can't find a link anymore).

[MikeK]

Also, see if you can work something out with Chi-Bots.  Get the kids building the bots that they can then compete with.  Maybe have a competition day once a month that they can pay you a small fee to participate in.  It sucks to wait all year to lose at a competition.

[JonnyBoats]

Not exactly traditional brick and mortar but something that you might consider is selling parts at shows and conventions along with website.

An example of this kind of business in the USA is Wireman (http://www.thewireman.com/ ) who sells everything a radio amateur needs to make an antenna. For years he has been traveling around the country bringing his wares to hamfests and conventions. He is extremely knowledgeable about everything he sells and is a great guy to deal with. When you see his booth or table at a hamfest you can handle the parts, compare them and have him explain the advantages and disadvantages of each item.

Even if you don't buy something at the show you can always call him up later and he will ship the items to you. Since his operation is not in the high rent district he is better able to keep his prices reasonable.

In your case perhaps you could operate from your home (to keep costs down initially) and take stock to hackerspaces in your car and sell at the hackerspace meetings. You could work a deal with the hackerspace whereby you share the profits with them on items sold at the meeting. You would build a loyal customer base who would most likely want to do business with you on your website.

[G7PSK]

This is the shop I used to frequent when I was a youngster still go on rare occasions but as I have now moved 50 miles away it is not often. They still carry a vast array of stuff but as Cambridge is a university town there is a lot af trade from students etc.


https://plus.google.com/104233592963336646831/photos?hl=en

[FJV]

You might want to consider combining several ways to generate income in one business.

Lots of electronic shops also do internet trading on the side.
Or for instance this EEVblog which also sells the µcurrent.

It would hedge your bets, when one source of income is slow, others might do well.

Also making a good business plan beforehand could never hurt.
http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-managing-business/starting-business/how-write-business-plan

[SLJ]

+1 on selling at shows and on line.
I went full time two years ago and attend several HAM Fests and antique radio shows every summer around the North East U.S.  Finding storage, buying a small trailer and camper van, surplus inventory and estate buyouts, along with building a easy to use web site is still cheaper than being tied to the overhead of a brick and mortar storefront.  You can't compete with the large corporations so I recommend you find a niche to specialize in like capacitors, ICs, tubes (remember tubes?), etc. and branch out from there.

[Simon]

I've not read the whole thread but my flat answers is (if things are the same in chicago as the UK) it won't work unless it's a sideline for a shop selling crap, that is what craplins in the UK is now and I very very rarely go there because they are overpriced and the workers don't know jack shit but always "want to help", and I just brush them aside and head for what I want, naturally they are not keen to hang around when they see me heading for the real electronics section (well as real as maplins gets).

I trade myself, I do ebay and am starting my own online shop, I'd never drem of a physical shop and even then I can't make a massive start because it costs money to buy stock in sufficient quantity to be able to resell it.

You niche is people who don't have a massive order and need something quike without paying high postage prices or making big orders, I can afford to charge just the stamp and some working from home.

[AndyC_772]

This is the shop I used to frequent when I was a youngster still go on rare occasions but as I have now moved 50 miles away it is not often. They still carry a vast array of stuff but as Cambridge is a university town there is a lot af trade from students etc.


https://plus.google.com/104233592963336646831/photos?hl=en

Blimey, are they still around? I used to go there all the time when I was a student, they had an enormous range of stuff. I still have the soldering iron I bought there for £5...

[larry42]

Doubt it would work as a business. Margins are tight (how many 10 cent resistors are you going to sell - very few because by the time ppl are serious enough to buy resistors, they might as well buy a resistor kit anyway). Inventory will kill you - if a project requires a LT3741 I would have to order one from the big 3 anyway as unlikely you have it in stock, hence would need to wait, so might as well order the rest of the BOM via a website.

So selling arduinos to a tech savvy audience (who would want to buy other stuff, exotic interfaces that you will not be able to stock all of) doesn't sound like a good plan.


Sorry, but I don't see it as realistic (spoken as a hobbyist, R&D business owner and 15 year industry veteran)



Sent from my HTC One S using Tapatalk 2

[larry42]

Completly forgot: my uncle used to have two electronics parts stores in Den Haag (netherlands). From the 70s til the late 90s. Business dwindled, he had to start selling kits, radio scanners, tv aerial boosters... no-one buys parts in stores anymore. Not a nice business to be in.

He's retired and has a sideline in mechanical clock repair - a skill he picked up later in life, and is now and excellent machinst.



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[poorchava]

In my city (not the smallest one, like 650k people) there are I think 3 or 4 retail stores, and I think they will go bankrupt in next years.

First one is stuck in the early 90's, selling pots, transistors, passives. I guess the most sophisticated stuff you will ever get is Atmega8 (actually Atmel more or less dominates Polish MCU hobby scene). And the spin off of that shop flings mainly various audio/video cables, connectors, adapters, speakers and parts to make those, car audio components, that kind of stuff. I guess they will last as long as people do DIY audio, when they stop it they will go out of business. They also sell some 'consumer stuff' like fuses, adapters, lightbulbs, leds, battery chargers, etc.

Second one is located like 500m from Technical University campus, which kind of determines the range of stuff you can buy there. You can find a lot of stuff, but mainly basic parts, and mostly THT because students in beginner courses are afraid of smd and u cannot use those with breadboard. So yeah, they can get you pots, connectors, transistors, most of the popular 7400 and 4000 chips, AVRs, some range of 0805 smd, also basic (read:chinese) soldering stations, power suppliers, multimeters.

Third one is a little obscure business located in 2 small rooms in a basement of apartment block in rather bad neighborhood. They actually sell bulk quantities of passives (i mean u can actually get good price for a reel of caps or resistors). They are actually my favourite store, because while they often don;t have really generic popular stuff, they have an amazing selection of rare components and sub-assemblies. i assume those are mostly some surplus supplies, but that's the place to buy stuff which often even Farnell won't have (Digikey and Mouser are virtually non-existent in poland because of shipping costs and RS Poland does business only with companies, not private people). They also can get you some more "arcane" parts as long as you are willing to buy some minimum quantity (small, e.g. 5pcs of IC, 10pcs of some particular electrolytic cap value etc)

Fourth one actually deals in development tools. They distribute Chinese brand stuff, but give a warranty for them which is nice. Thy sell Rigol, UNI-T, Atten, Korad, Zhaoxin, PT, and accessories for all of those. They also sell universal programmers, development boards and breakout boards of their own design. Recently they started selling smd 0805 and 0603 passives aat amazing (for a hobbyist) prices per 100pcs, but so far they only have resistors.

What I'm trying to show is that you need to find your niche like audio, old-school stuff, students, cheap development supplies, industrial automation, audio/video replacement parts, embedded system stuffs (i mean more like Raspberry or BeagleBoard than simple PIC or AVR) or whatever.

[Codemonkey]

Here in South Yorkshire, we do have a great little independant shop called Bardwell's, which has been around for donkeys years, and there prices are probably better than Maplin, but again, unless I'm going past, its not worth the bus fare, when I can get stuff shipped for the cost of a postage stamp or even less.

Wow, small world, I spent most of the money I earned from doing a milk round whilst a teenager in Bardwells. Used to cycle down there from home in Dronfield, stand in there wondering what they had in the thousands of little drawers in the racks behind the counter and leave with a little bag of goodies before the long cycle home (uphill!). Not been in there for years despite working in Sheffield (I'm probably about a mile away from them as I type this). I live in Chesterfield now, and we also have JPG Electronics, but not been in there for a while either. Maplins are completely useless, I only use them if really desperate for personal stuff and very occasionally for work stuff since they're about a 10 minute walk from the office. They've become like a bricks and mortar version of DealExtreme but with much higher prices and annoying staff.

[grumpydoc]

Here in South Yorkshire.....

Doncaster alone used to have three - Modern Electronics (Sunny Bar, then Market St, then Nether Hall Road), Tandy and one the name of which I forget (corner of Wood Street) so I never needed to actually venture as far out as Bardwells in Sheffield.

They are all gone now, sadly.

[Simon]

what happened to Tandy ? sadly I went to live in Italy just as i was getting into electronics and by the time I came back our local was gone. My dad bought me a 200 in 1 electronics projects thing in there.

[grumpydoc]

My dad bought me a 200 in 1 electronics projects thing in there.

I had one of those!!

There's a Wikipedia page which gives the history - the name lives on as tandyonline.co.uk

[Simon]

blimy, they have become a mere shadow, I'm guessing someone is keeping up the name an running a home based shop, a search for 78l05 yields nothing and they have limited parts but their prices are not bad.