History of bulk electronic components suppliers

[Mark Aitchison]

Hi,
purely out of curiosity, is there anyone who can tell me what happened
to popular electronics mail-order companies of the 1970s like Poly Paks
in the US and BiPak & BiPrePak in the UK? There must have been a trend
that killed them off, and caused other medium sized names to shrink
while a few grew very large? Is there a book on this element of history??

Mark A

 

[Eeyore]

Mark Aitchison wrote:

Hi,
purely out of curiosity, is there anyone who can tell me what happened
to popular electronics mail-order companies of the 1970s like Poly Paks
in the US and BiPak & BiPrePak in the UK? There must have been a trend
that killed them off, and caused other medium sized names to shrink
while a few grew very large? Is there a book on this element of history??

I always assumed it was due to a decline in hobby interests, electronics
especially.

Graham

 

[Michael Black]

Mark Aitchison (MarkA@protov.plain.co.nz) writes:

Hi,
purely out of curiosity, is there anyone who can tell me what happened
to popular electronics mail-order companies of the 1970s like Poly Paks
in the US and BiPak & BiPrePak in the UK? There must have been a trend
that killed them off, and caused other medium sized names to shrink
while a few grew very large? Is there a book on this element of history??

Mark A

It's easy to see a trend after the fact, but a reality is that even long
standing businesses can go under. There have been some long existing chains
here in Canada that went out of business in the past decade or so, and the
immediate reaction is "but they've been there forever, how can it be...".
The fact that the businesses had been around for a long time does not
mean they are impervious to all the problems businesses have, it just
makes it a lot more noticeable.

Poly-Paks just sort of faded out. Unlike a lot of things, I can't recall
any exact time when it disappeared. I suspect their prime had peaked before
they actually closed down.

A lot of their stuff was surplus. They started out in the early sixties,
at a time when semiconductors were still relatively new, and so they
were supplying things that the old-line stores weren't, and maybe doing
it at a better price than a lot of places that did sell the parts (because
they were selling surplus). But later, other outlets had come along to
sell to hobbyists, either old-style stores adapting or new places starting
up, and they were generally better than Poly-Paks. They had a wider range,
their prices were good, and they weren't selling things of dubious origins.
Say post-1975, there were other places to buy that sort of thing, but the
other places had everything you'd need. Poly-Paks hadn't changed much,
including their ads, and while you could get an 8080 from them by
that point (though I can't remember if they had a better price on them
or not), they didn't have all the peripheral ICs or even TTL to put
together a computer. ANd as digital logic took over in a lot of things,
the projects got more complicated. So while being able to get a transistor
in the early sixties might have been neat, or get a PLL IC in the early
seventies because you wanted to play around with them for their own sake,
as the projects got more complicated the "neat IC" was a lesser part of
it all, and my recollection is that Poly-Paks couldn't supply it all.

Their closing down might have been a result of this, or it might have
been a result of overbuying something and getting stuck with too much
stock and not enough cash, like any business has to be concerned with.
Or maybe an owner died, and nobody wanted to take over. I don't know,
but there are lots of factors that could have been the issue that
had nothing to do with a "trend".

Michael

 

[Salmon Egg]

If you think electronic hobbyists are having trouble getting basic stuff
consider hobby chemists. With the incredibly stupid war on drugs and the
war's even more stupid means of enforcement it is virtually impossible to
buy simple chemicals such as acids. In some states, possessing chemical
glassware is becoming a felony. Laboratory supply houses like VWR are no
longer accessible. UPS is imposing incredibly high hazardous material
shipping charges. Suppliers, if you can find them, are loathe to sell small
quantities to jerks who might sue them later.

If electronics still used vacuum tubes instead of semiconductors that
operate at much lower voltage, selling electronic stuff would open the
vendors to too much liability.

Bill

 

[Lostgallifreyan]

Salmon Egg <salmonegg@sbcglobal.net> wrote in
news:C1F4A71F.614BA%salmonegg@sbcglobal.net:

...it is virtually impossible to
buy simple chemicals such as acids.

The UK is far more locked down than the US. While I could buy a small
amount of H2SO4 with a motorcycle baterry, it is the ONLY way I can do it,
a few tens of millilitres at a time with a waste of hard-to-recycle plastic
and lead as waste.

Fortunately, a bit of invention (and good advice) got me the isopropanol
and acetone I need for optics assembly cleaning. I gave up on the idea of
home anodising because the few places that would sell what I needed are
only allowed to sell complete kits here (at exorbitant prices). It's so
ruthless that even these will go out of business very soon, once people
realise they can never privately buy the acid needed to re-stock their
original investment.

There are one or two chemical shops online in the UK, but they offer stuff
almost exclusively useful to those who want to make explosives! I
researched their names (and associated names found in conjunction) and
found more than one forum of amatuer chemists occasionally discussing them.
The general consensus is that such sites are fronts designed to hook the
stupid would-be bomber. Their owners certainly never answered any question
of mine, which they would if they'd had any real intention and ability to
sell the stuff.

We do live in increasingly paranoid times. I'm not sure how, or even IF,
thius can explain the lack of hobby electronics sales. Maybe it can. A lot
of the public is becoming increasingly frightened of science in general.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Mark Aitchison wrote:

Hi,
purely out of curiosity, is there anyone who can tell me what happened
to popular electronics mail-order companies of the 1970s like Poly Paks
in the US and BiPak & BiPrePak in the UK? There must have been a trend
that killed them off, and caused other medium sized names to shrink
while a few grew very large? Is there a book on this element of history??

Mark A

Greed. The rent and property taxes got so high they couldn't afford
to stay where they were, and many of the owners were close to retirement
age, so they just closed the business. Another thing that hurts surplus
is JIT manufacturing, and lower quantities of military equipment being
built, to generate more surplus.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida