We used to have the most amazing little electronics store a lot like this called "Ra-Elco" in SLC, Utah, but specifically devoted to every wild bit of electronics you could imagine, ranging from individual little components of every sort all the way up to weird esoteric devices nobody's ever heard of (at least there were a lot I'd never seen before). Totally love these kinda shoppes, and I truly wish they weren't such a dying breed. :(
I like these places too but I can see why they are dying. The number of SKUs people want has exploded and the cost competition from buying online is unreal. Recently I needed a motor driver in a hurry (a4988 or equivalent) and decided to visit my local electronics shop. They wanted $9 for it (plus tax), which I was willing to pay, but were out of stock. So I went home and found a 5 pack of the exact same part for about $10, shipped from the US.
The reality is that with these electronics things it's not just 20 or 30% cheaper to buy online, it's often 1/10 the price or better. I can order a 10 pack of pin headers for $1-2 from China and each of those headers costs 50c at my local shop.
This is a benefit of having ultra dense industry specific zones like the Shenzhen SEZ. Physical vendors get the volume to warrant operating and reasonable pricing, buyers get components on short notice.
Suburbanization set up the US for failure here, and the governments haven't bothered intentionally creating any equivalent of Shenzhen. Santa Clara county used to be the spot, and I'd regularly pick up quickturn PCBs in person. Still can, but if you're in SF you're probably going to wait for next day shipping unless it's super super important, in which case it could come from any domestic CM.
The US used to have its own SZ in lower Manhattan. They were abandoned when Japan did things cheaper.
This doesn't really solve you problem, but they did just open (or about to) a Micro Center in Santa Clara.
Is it just about having dense industrial zones? I would have imagined cost of labor to be the major cause of price differences.
A lot of the cost of silicon valley labor comes down to extremely high housing prices. A lot has been made of how the tech boom was simply a wealth transfer from investors to bay area real estate + homeowners.
Sure but even if you exclude Silicon Valley, the minimum wage for a US worker must be a fair bit higher than the equivalent non-US worker.
The public's (lack of) tolerance of pollution also impacted things. It's not like PCB manufacturing is clean.
PCB manufacturing isn't that bad, semiconductor fab is very nasty. It was nasty an unmitigated way during the birth of silicon valley, check out a superfund site map if you're bored.
https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?layers=c1229e...
I tried to go to AS&S a few times working on projects. They never had what I needed in-stock. It honestly feels more like a toy/knicknack store rather than a place where you can get things you need to build or repair things.
We used to have Electronics Warehouse here in SoCal (Riverside) I miss them but admit I would rarely go. Selection was definitely better than Radio Shack, but catered to an electronics era my personal designs had grown away from.
I think this is another challenge for these kinds of stores. The market moves on and their inventory becomes obsolete. So you end up with a store full of BCD thumb wheels and tube sockets and wire wrap materials that very few people want to buy. They'll never recoup the investment in these things because they've become obsolete. Even more modern things have the same problem - if you bought a pile of Arduino Due-s or BASIC Stamps to sell good luck moving those today.
My understanding is that Ra-Elco essentially moved to Standard Supply after the building burned down. I haven't checked it out myself yet so I can't confirm.
I dunno, but I do know that Standard Supply has a lot of the items I generally need and / or seek out when I'm visiting such places, so that's all good for me. I still miss Ra-Elco, but as long as I can buy the right parts locally when I'm in a real hurry to grab some important little widget or gizmo, that's what matters most to me. Especially important since Radio Shack is no longer at all that kinda store (and hasn't been for many years now).