(Remember Radio Shack, and when they actually sold components?)
You must be close to retirement.
Somewhere around 1980 they tried running a couple of shops in the Netherlands. The one in the city I lived in was in a prime location in a major shopping area, right across from the town hall. There were at least three well-stocked electronic parts shops less than 10 minutes cycling away, with agreeable parts prices instead of ones that can only be explained by RS shipping each part individually, by first class airmail, from the factory to HQ, where they would be manually packed in those Archer blister packs, then sent on, again individually by 1st class airmail, to some regional distribution centre and from there by luxury limousine to the shop. Which would then slap the price sticker on, with the decimal separator left off.
Those shops also had a Pimply-Faced Shop Assistant to customer ratio of 3 or 4 to 1 for the moments there actually WAS a customer inside. Knowing nothing (of course) and trying to get your name and address for whatever inane marketing stuff HQ could think up.
They didn't do well, and shut within a year.
Stock remains ended up at one of the other shops, now priced in line with the rest of that shop's inventory, but it still didn't sell; ten years on it was something of a sediment in their bargain bin.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
