General Discussion

His store actually topped $1 mil one year because he knew what his customers in the region needed; he talked to the local schools and base techs to bag up the bits and pieces repair components they were always running out of. He'd always order lots of a lot of TV and TV hookup (DVD players and gaming console) adapters, metal detectors, electric telescopes, remote sensors and cameras, Ham Radio sets, receivers, scanners, cable, RC kits...
Stuff people couldn't get at Walmart or the local hardware store.
And batteries, lots of batteries and battery chargers.
He saw the writing on the wall in the late 90's corporate started selling computer internet and cell phone services - Sprint, Version, MSN, AOL - for the residuals.
The store didn't get anything, except the salesperson got a $20 commission for the contract. The transaction revenue, including the item package covered under the service contract (the phone or the computer) went to corporate, not the store, making it look as if the store was losing money.

The focus on getting a salesperson to spend time selling a 2 -4 year contract for "a penny cell phone" or "a $150 Windows computer and printer bundle" that provided residual revenue to corporate, instead of selling 5 to 10 other items - RC cars, home theater cables, cartons of batteries, a couple radio repair kits and an HF amplifier was killing smaller franchised stores, and slowly strangling the corporate stores.