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Final, final end of an Australian era? - Dick Smith Electronics

K

k0d3g3ar

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Scottsdale, Arizona
I worked at Dick Smith Electronics in Australia as a teenage kid in the late 1970s. This is where I got my real start with personal computers and electronics (System 80 - TRS-80 clone) which turned into a lifetime career. Although the original Dick Smith Electronics was sold in the 1980s to a corporate conglomerate, which eventually grew to buy out Tandy/Radio Shack franchises in Australia in the early 2000s, like Radio Shack it turned into an electronics retailer rather than a hobbyist supply house.

Sad news: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-05/dick-smith-enters-voluntary-administration/7067798
 
Yes. Sad. In moving out of the hobbiest electronics market they lost their niche. That's now occupied here by Jaycar.

I wonder if Dick Smith regrets selling his name as the brand when he sold his company to Woolworths in 1982?

Tez
 
I grew up spending equal time in the local Tandy store and the (then) HUGE! Dick Smith HQ shop at North Ryde. Seems vaguely appropriate that both Tandy Corp and Dick Smith go down in close proximity.

For a couple of years when discussing Jaycar I've always used Dick Smith as an example of where it could end up if it isn't careful; a third-rate JB-HiFi with no real idea of what it is.

Electronics Australia, ETI, Tandy, Dick Smith, Applied Technology, . . . the tech world of my teenage years seems all gone now.
 
I'll remark that in the US, Radio Shack/Tandy is gone, for most intents and purposes (if you've got a gift card, you can redeem it). All of the retailers that catered to the home hobbyist are gone: Lafayette, Olson, Heath,...

Sic transit gloria mundi.

It's the way things are. On the flip side, some of the liquidators are offering pretty good deals on old Radio Shack merchandise if you can find it. I recently purchased an RS "heavy duty" wall phone with caller ID. It really is very sturdy, unlike most of the cheap garbage being offered today.
 
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Actually Radio Shack is still around, at least in the form it's been in for the last decade (limited selection of overpriced electronic components). Sprint bought a lot of Radio Shack stores and continues to operate them. Just a few months ago I walked into a Radio Shack and bought a pack of resistors.
 
Yes, and Jaycar Electronics seem to be thriving in the same hobbyist market DSE walked away from.

My favorite childhood activity was wandering around a Lafayette store located where we lived in Ithaca, NY, about 1964. Transistor hand-held AM radios were a big thing, starting at $6. Electronic "modules" were $2.95, similar to what Jaycar sell today for $20+.

What I miss having here are the industrial liquidation stores.
 
Plasma said:
Actually Radio Shack is still around, at least in the form it's been in for the last decade (limited selection of overpriced electronic components). Sprint bought a lot of Radio Shack stores and continues to operate them. Just a few months ago I walked into a Radio Shack and bought a pack of resistors.
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The name may survive (the US Bankruptcy Court has given permission for its sale), but rumors of rescue are rampant, but not very solid. Here's the latest I could find. I don't think the ultimate outcome is by any means certain.
 
paul said:
Yes, and Jaycar Electronics seem to be thriving in the same hobbyist market DSE walked away from.
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I think Jaycar made two key decisions (as much as you can talk about a corporate entity making a "decision"). The first was over the last 10 or so years reversing the shift to the "gimmick" market (stupid talking bouncers etc). Not gone, but it was expanding its shelf space, then started shrinking. The second occurred over the last 12 months as their catalog started responding to the fact you could order a lot of stuff directly from China/HK at a fraction of their price, esp in the arduino/PIC area - they now seem to have introduced cheaper board/module/shield lines that give them a chance in the "cheaper in X weeks verse costlier right now" tradeoff.

(There were other changes of product as well which I think helped, but those are the two that stand out most to me)
 
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pjhacnau said:
they now seem to have introduced cheaper board/module/shield lines that give them a chance in the "cheaper in X weeks verse costlier right now" tradeoff.
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That Duinotech stuff they are selling is really really cheap; so much so it's comparable to eBay. I've bought a few different sensors and arduino boards and they seem fine. Only downside is they have zero documentation so you end up on the freetronics website 'borrowing' their datasheets.

As stated earlier we could all see the end of Dick Smith coming. I personally stopped shopping there around 10 years ago when they discontinued selling discrete electronic components. It was a shame really, Dick Smith was much closer to me than Jaycar plus their prices used to be slightly cheaper for some parts.

Just recently when they started advertising on prime time TV with the 'Dick Does Deals' promotions I suspected they might be in some sort of financial trouble. Who was going to buy a crummy second rate TV set at a 'discount' price that was still expensive?
 
tezza said:
I wonder if Dick Smith regrets selling his name as the brand when he sold his company to Woolworths in 1982?
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I was lucky enough to contact Dick Smith directly a year or so ago, and thanked him for all he did for my career. I've got an open invitation to visit him in NSW next time I'm there. However living in Phoenix AZ now, it isn't kinda "on my way thru" these days. But I'm inclined to make a special trip anyway.

He's always been a bit of a hero of mine - not only as he was my boss, but also that I just tend to agree with most of what he has to say on a political level. I can't criticize him for selling the company when he did. It was the right thing to do. Its just that the new owners really had no interest or association with the home hobbyist market that he really championed.

I'm not sure that too many larger operations could sustain that market nowadays. Given the Internet, Amazon and online e-tailers. Maybe in Australia but certainly not in the USA.

K
 
Yes, I was lucky enough to have a long phone conversation with him (Dick Smith) in the early 2000s when I was researching the origin of the Dick Smith System 80 for my archive website. He's a real character and quite passionate about what he does, and what he believes in. A very shrewd businessman too, at least when he owned Dick Smith.
 
Like others in this thread, it comes as no surprise to see the demise of Dick Smith Electronics. I did work there briefly back in about 1982(?) and remember drooling over the Exidy Sorcerers, the System 80s, and the CAT, none of which I could afford back then. But I did buy my ZX81 from there, and I also bought a System 80 many years later.

As for Dick Smith himself, he's always struck me as a shrewd operator and somewhat of a hero when I was young, and he's probably my favourite "rich guy" nowadays.
 
Although I'm not from Australia, the "Dick Smith System 80" just has to be one of the most interesting names for a microcomputer ever. It is sounds so personal and informal, perhaps a little too much, as if it had something to do with porn.

As for the company, a sad way to go, but the real kick in the teeth is to the consumers who hold gift cards or vouchers and cannot redeem them or get a chargeback. I would not be surprised if a few people tried to take a "five finger" solution to their gift card problem.
 
There are two phases to the demise of the Dick Smith chain.

The first was when it went from being a personal passion-driven enterprise to a subsidiary of a generic retail corporation. The philosophy of generic retailers is completely incompatible with the specialty, big inventory, comprehensive stocking of an electronic components retail business. The corporate people in charge were driven by monthly performance indicators and thought it would be smart to cut every low-turnover line from their stock. They had no idea they were killing the only reason people entered the store in the first place - with confidence they could find something there they could not find elsewhere. So began the death spiral.

The second phase was perhaps even more disgraceful. The corporate owners sold it to a venture capital firm who pulled off a stunt that should have been illegal - stripping the stock and assets even further, then somehow pulling off a float promotion that valued the shell at five times what they had paid for it. There was no way the floated company could trade up to that book value, and the stock tanked almost immediately. There was virtually no equity to back their debt-funded working capital. "Caveat emptor" is all very well, but a lot of the lost capital would have been funds siphoned from innocent investors through intermediate vehicles and shonky funds managers, ready to believe anything with the famous Dick Smith name on it. Speculators playing out of their depth.

I hope Jaycar can stay out of the hands of carpet-baggers. Apart from a pretty good range of component stock on hand, they employ people who, on the whole, know something about the items a customer will be looking for (quite a few seem to be electronics students or hobbyists themselves).

Rick
 
I have a few issues with Dick, Dick Smith electronics was a blatant Radio Shack ripoff, right down to the annual catalogs. Then he organized protests outside of a nearby Tandy Electronics (Radio Shack) store in protest of the American chain and encouraged people to buy from his Australian business (clone). Talk about gall.
 
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Jaycar is next, it's all eBay now.

I used to buy from Jaycar, however for what I pay Jaycar $10 for, I can probably get on eBay for $1 and perhaps even 5 for $1.

I don't understand how Dick Smith, or Jaycar or Radio Shack etc has even lasted this long.
 
IBM Portable PC said:
But why shop there when the same products are on eBay, often for about 90% less?
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Quite often they're not the same. Jaycar parts are generally better quality that the cheaper stuff on ebay. I always try Jaycar fist and am happy to pay a bit of a premium to support them. It would be a sad day if Jaycar were to go, there's nothing like getting parts that you need from a local store right away instead of a 2-4 week wait from China.
 
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