Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?
They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.
Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?
So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.
And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn’t compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn’t sell.
And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at… putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.
If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn’t have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that’s what they did.
I don’t know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.
adults of tumblr how on earth do you decide on what mattress you want to order
Go to the store.
Go to the store and lie on it for five minutes.
I know online is cheaper, but go to the store. Online delivery has a send back guarantee, but do you really know yourself capable of and willing to dismantle your bedroom because it didn’t work out? No? GO TO THE STORE.
Go to the store and try it out and compare prices and nine out of ten times, they will match the online prices for you, because you’re THERE and they can’t afford to let you walk out empty handed.
Try it out, figure out the right hardness for you. Make sure you’re comfortable.
A good mattress will last you 20-30 years depending on how often you move and how well you commit to taking care of it: vacuum it regularly and flip as per instructions, usually once every six months.
A bad mattress costs about the same as a good mattress, up front, except for the fact it will fuck you up for years and you might end up with chronic pain because of it.
Go to the store. Try it out.
I got a 46% discount and 18 interest free installment payment on mine, just cause I was physically there.
Figure out your budget. Go to the store. Ask to try it out. Make sure it feels good.
You deserve a good mattress and you deserve the money you spend to be worthwhile.
You’ve got this.
Also a lot of those trendy online-only delivery mattresses are not quality controlled, multiple people have discovered their mattress was stuffed with fiber glass only after it ripped and spewed sharp fibers over literally all of their belongings
I love that he apparently got the job because he looked so pathetic that children truly believed he would be unable to solve puzzles created by a cartoon dog without their assistance.
the thing i think no one tells these new kids about making their own website is that its 1. fun if you’re a puzzle freak bc its basically making problems for yourself to solve lol 2. mostly just copy and pasting other people’s CSS or css from w3cschools
so theres no like, innate skill level you need in order to make a website. just the time and desire to keep hitting “preview page” and then staring at the page trying to figure out which piece of code broke what
average american zoomer: that does not sound like fun
me: its not. im so angry at my computer now that im shadowboxing it
calling every gnc cis person you see an “egg waiting to crack” even as a joke is not cool or funny at all actually it is extremely invasive and weird and you are just reinventing gender roles but making it “progressive”
is it just me or is this is an extremely weird thing to say about a random stranger based on nothing but a snippet of an eavesdropped conversation
