[conspire] Fw: Sixty Years of Lafayette Radio

[Ross Bernheim]

Rick,

Lafayette Radio went out of business in the '90s. There was a Lafayette radio store on 9th Street in
San Francisco for many years. My father worked there for a number of years. The owner sold it to the 
Lafayette franchise owner in Sacramento who moved the store to Market street. I worked there for a couple
of years. The new owner also had a store in Berkeley as well as several in the Sacramento area.

For years, Johnson and Lafayette dominated the CB market. When I was at the SF store, all the Radio Shack
stores referred customers to me when they couldn't answer questions or solve problems with CBs. I got a lot
of business from them.

I also worked at the Lafayette Radio store in Honolulu for several years while I went to college and for a couple of 
years after. Lafayette had some very good stereo receivers at the time. 

What did Lafayette in was when they hired a new President from JC Penny. He brought in a bunch of his buddies 
and forced out the old timers with knowledge of the electronics and hi fi industry. They proceeded to try and out 
Radio Shack Radio Shack. A disaster that destroyed the company.


Ross


On Apr 3, 2013, at 10:37 AM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):
> 
>> A ham radio friend sent the following.  I think it might be of
>> interest to at least some of the Cabal attendees. 
> 
> Yeah.  They're unknown in northern California, but there was one in East
> Brunswick not far from where I went to college in New Jersey.  It was
> near-universally referred to as 'Laughalot Radio'.  This was the late
> 1970s, and they were having severe business difficulties, and were sadly
> reduced from what they once were.
> 
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