Woolworths cuts off Dick

Woolworths has rung the death knell for bricks-and-mortar electronics retailing in Australia, as it announced that it is divesting its iconic Dick Smith electronics chain. The company has decided that gadgets won't ever match groceries, booze and gambling, and yesterday outlined plans for a $AU300 million restructure of the …

[Anonymous Coward]

Self inflicted dis-memberment

The writing was on the wall when Dick Smiths stores stopped carrying kits and components for the electronics enthusiasts.

They may not have accounted for much direct sales, but everybody knows one and they are the ones who get asked for electronics purchasing recommendations.

Dick Smith screwed us, we returned the favour.

No need for doom and gloom about bricks and mortar electronics stores, even though we all make use of eBay, DonTronics, Futurlec and the rest we all enjoy a bit of technical man-shopping.

Jaycar will get along just fine thank you.

[Big-nosed Pengie]

Well said. Dick went from being a trusted an knowledgeable shop to just another generic box seller. Their demise was predicable and too late.

[Nordrick Framelhammer]

Indeed.

I agree with you 100%.

They moved from their base of selling electronic components to being nothing more than another consumer electronics seller with clueless sales droids. It would not be so bad if they were reasonably priced but sometimes their prices are 50% higher than their competitors. They are certainly regarded as a joke in the computer industry. As for calling themselves "techxperts", what a joke. Most of their sales droids don't have a clue beyond the promotional crap they are told..

[Bruce Hoult]

Here in NZ...

Dick Smith NZ just in the second half of 2011 stopped stocking components. I'm actually surprised they lasted that long. I remember that even in the 90's Radio Shack in the USA didn't have components any more. That Dick Smith did surely meant that it was a personal non-economic decision by someone in upper management.

I'm going to miss it, but It's a bit rich for Mr Dick Smith to complain about management decisions 30 years after he sold the business.

[Wombling_Free]

You can wait decades for a headline that good...

...and it's been decades since I went to The Electronic Dick (as they used to advertise themselves in the eighties), since Jaycar fulfils my home-built GPS-enabled-Arduino-smartcard-rewriter needs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree

Before I noticed the author's name, I would have said "It takes balls to write a headline like that!"

[Robert Heffernan]

Sparkfun FTW

These days I tend to do all my component shopping at Sparkfun, the old Dick Smith, and now even jaycar are behind the mark for the really fun components. These days 99% of all ICs are surface mount with such tiny pins (if they have pins) that soldering them is really hard. Along comes sparkfun with little PCBs with all the connections broken out for the parts putting modern tech back in the hobbiest hands.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dick said...

...ouch!

[P. Lee]

$20 for tos-link to mac mini optical connector

As far as I can tell, its a bit of plastic with a hole in the middle. Got one off ebay for $0.50 + $2 shipping.

I'm not going to mourn them.

[Bsquared]

Entirely agree with the first comment. When I realised they'd ditched all the little fiddly useful parts, I was thoroughly pissed off, as JayCar is a long drive away. Ebay just isn't the same.

The other thing that irked me intensely about Dick Smith in recent years was that they charged premium prices for their own-brand cables - 25 bucks for a bog-standard USB extension cable, 20 bucks for a metre of Cat6! And then they started to only sell Belkin A/V cables, presumably because Woolies had signed a pact with Belkin.

[John Tserkezis]

It would be fair to say:

Firstly, Dick Smith Electronics started heading downhill not co-incedently when he (Dick Smith) sold it to Woolworths.

It would also be fair to say that Woolworths alone, did a spanking good job of screwing it over, though I'm surprised it took them this long.

Thirdly, Dick Smith, upon hearing Woolworths planned on (originally) selling off the electronics chainstore to an overseas buyer, planned to rubbish his namesake in protest (he's very publically pro-Australian anti-overseas when it comes to ownership of business here in oz).

[mikebartnz]

What a joke

"Following further restructure, Dick Smith will be divested as a going concern to an appropriate buyer and will continue to operate as normal."

It ceased to being a going concern when it became another toaster shop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dick Smith the Import Cheap Chinese Shit and

Sell 4 to 7 times higher price than equivalent stores overseas is dying because the Australian consumer woke up to the big rip off and now just go to Dick Smith to try out goods in person and decide what they want and then leave the store to go online and order direct from China or from USA or UK web stores for 1/4th to 1/7th the price Dick Smith charges.

Die you smug bastard DIE!