TC Hobbytown gets Radio Shack Express
HobbyTown co-owners Gary Phillips and Angela Millet at the Radio Shack Express location within their store, 11145 Turkey Drive in Turkey Creek.
“We had regularly, constantly been asked for this very thing,” said Gary L. Phillips, co-owner of HobbyTown Turkey Creek, adding that until the Radio Shack Express addition, “people kept asking for things and we had no way to fulfill that.”
The new “merger” helps HobbyTown now become an all-in-one stop for “a lot of DIY projects, school projects, robotics, things like that. … A lot of homeschool people will now have access to these that they didn’t have before,” Phillips said.
“We now have 28 linear feet (80 to 100 square feet) of Radio Shack merchandise (total building size is 7,800 square feet). We have the basics: diodes, transistors, potentiometers, soldering equipment, switches — the nuts and bolts, if you will, of electronics. And we have them at a fair price.
“It’s worked out very well,” he added. “The response has been very positive. Traffic has increased
“They just opened up additional items for us to purchase if we want to, that would be some of the larger things, the audio-visual equipment, radios, things along that line. I’m not sure if we’re going to do that.”
However, “We’re literally keeping notes of things that people have an interest in,” which are not part of the stock, Phillips said. “We’re going to be special ordering virtually anything out of their catalog.”
With 140 Hobbytowns nationwide, “When it’s all said and done, they’ll probably be over a hundred Hobbytowns from around the country that will be participating,” Phillips said.
During a trade show “the first of July” at HobbyTown’s Lincoln, Nebraska, home office, “this opportunity came up, and of course we jumped on it,” he said.
While partnering with HobbyTown, Radio Shack “doesn’t have to invest in brick-and-mortar stores,” Phillips said.
