Most who are old enough remember when Radio Shack
had walls of electronics and hardware components for DIY
The dawn of the Twenty First Century seemed to bode poorly
for such retail. Catalog companies like Jameco and MPJA, and even the majors
like Digikey and Mouser became the source of choice for DIY.
Online sales outlets then saw growth. Some above morphed to
online. And many project oriented experimenters (“hackers”, “makers”
– what have you) moved to coordination with such online entities.
And there are closely allied entities (physical or
conceptual DIY)
And one can get practically anything from Amazon.
And well executed online hardware thrives in forms like
McMaster-Carr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMaster-Carr
But the retail store is not dead... Sometimes as a hybrid works - like fasteners from Fastenal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastenal
And Home Depot and Walmart are developing online presence to
leverage their retail…
But getting back to the point. DIY modules are now back on
the walls at Radio Shack. And they are popping up else where. There is a whole section
at Microcenter in Cambridge
for such. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Center
CompUSA and Fry’s are similar (and there are some locals
still holding on like You-Do-It in Waltham ).
