The personal computer market has changed a lot since I moved to Vancouver in 1986, and the retail market has changed along with it.
In 1986 the Macintosh was only two years old, the IBM PC was all of five. Walking into a decent computer store, whether a hardware-focused place like Future Shop, or a software-focused one like Super Software, you could buy titles for the following systems:
- Apple II
- IBM PC
- Atari 8-bit
- Commodore VIC-20
- Commodore 64
- Macintosh
- Amiga
- Atari ST (520/1040)
Ten years later the market every system was dead or dying, save for two. The Macintosh had carved out a niche, primarily for those using it in desktop publishing, but it was the PC that came to dominate, both with businesses and home users, with the advent of VGA graphics and decent sound cards making them viable for gaming. The growth of the PC led to the number of stores selling PCs, PC parts and software exploding.
I did a lot of my early shopping back then at a few local stores such as ATIC Computers and Frontier PC before settling on NCIX for their combination of good stock, retail locations and solid pricing. Just this summer I was still buying from them, picking up a mouse and some USB stick, not realizing they were on the verge of shutting down all of their retail stores and declaring bankruptcy. It makes me sad to see another long-time local business go under, even as I admit to a bad taste in my mouth over the way customers are predictably getting the short end of the stick as the company goes under.
Also, how does a company selling tech in the shadow of places like Amazon and Newegg not realize the future is online? I liked shopping at NCIX because I live in a condo and it’s a pain to get larger items delivered, because they end up at some depot and it’s just easier to get them at a store. But if I lived in a house? I’d order everything online–it hardly makes sense to do otherwise, with either free or cheap shipping. But the owners of NCIX apparently thought otherwise, and even as the competition got swallowed up (Best Buy devouring Future Shop), shifted to corporate/online sales Frontier PC) or just vanished altogether (to my surprise, ATIC is still around, though they have moved to a new location next to MEC), they kept their focus on retail stores that never generated enough traffic to justify the expense of operating them.
And in this case, we’re looking at stuff that doesn’t translate easily into digital format like books, magazines and music. But it doesn’t matter–people are shifting their purchases for a lot of electronics online and NCIX lost out.
I guess I’ll get a chance to see how well delivery works from Amazon and Newegg now.
