Adafruit, Sparkfun, et al are also working out of cheap locations, Not malls and other high rent retail locations. I ordered from Adafruit once and it shipped from an apartment in Brooklyn.
Radio Shack is a retail store with many locations. There are not many people that have an immediate need for Rasberry pi components, they order online. So that model is dead. Radio Shack despite this does indeed still devote a small area of the store to things like this.
>There are not many people that have an immediate need for...
There are not many people that have an immediate need for any one particular item in a dry goods store on any particular day. The same is true for other stores and was always true for nearly every item RS carried.
I think the arguments ITT boil down to: did the internet kill RS, or did RS finally succumb to its own poor management.
> There are not many people that have an immediate need for any one particular item in a dry goods store on any particular day.
Small floor-plan dry goods stores aren't exactly a booming business, either.
> I think the arguments ITT boil down to: did the internet kill RS, or did RS finally succumb to its own poor management.
And the answer is "yes".
(In longer form, the internet was a key factor in a shift in the retail market for the classes of goods RS sells whose nature RS's management was slow to recognize, and reacted to poorly.)
Radio Shack is a retail store with many locations. There are not many people that have an immediate need for Rasberry pi components, they order online. So that model is dead. Radio Shack despite this does indeed still devote a small area of the store to things like this.