foone:

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.

bunjywunjy:

10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

AAAND WE HAVE LIFTOFF!

HAPPY MOON LANDING DAY!!!

whats-a-bear:

whats-a-bear:

whats-a-bear:

if i, a man, suck a straight man’s dick, is he still straight?

No, a man who has sex with a man is not straight

Yes, a straight man can experiment with other men

OTHER??

based

sl-an:

This was my barbenheimer

lemonsweet:

greathoughtsphilosopy:

Standing at the top of the stair well wearing my bunk mates clothes to scare him at the abandoned factory sleepover after our scary “Clone vat” movie watch party but I forgot he put a curse on his clothing to act like puppies when ever they see him so they rip themselves off my body and bound down the stairs to greet him and start barking and im just naked at the top of the stairs and afraiud and embarased and but instead of being angry he steps up to me and stwrts to. .. …. we start kissinf

ninsletamain:

Impulsively painted Shara Ishvalda this morning. I miss this creepy-eyed menace.

charlesoberonn:

uncomfortablecliche:

foone:

conzoop:

(*400dB Crunch noise*)

Fun fact! Decibel is a logarithmic scale. This means an increase of 10 dB is a doubling in strength.

It’s impossible to get a sound louder than about 200 dB on Earth: this is because a soundwave is a series of peaks and troughs of air compression, and around 200 dB you hit COMPLETE VACUUM in the troughs.

So, decibels are a measure of energy.. 400 dB is around 10^28. By the Atomic Rockets Boom Table, the dinosaur-killer impact was merely 10^23.

400 dB is “all the oceans flash boil off the planet and then the crust melts”. This rabbit just destroyed all life on earth with a noise equivalent to an exaton of TNT. Aliens on pluto are getting woken up going “what the fuck was that light?”

that bunny is so powerful

Correction. Every 10dB isn’t doubling the strength. It’s growing it by 10 times.

miabobriha:

Dank spidey memes