af@sei.ucl.ac.be (Alain FONTAINE) (02/08/91)
Would you believe that, in the late sixties, there was a Lafayette Radio store in Brussels, Belgium ? As far as I remember, they were selling the most abrasive magnetic tape one could find.... 8-) /AF BTW : There was also a Heathkit store carrying the entire line...
Ed_Greenberg@3mail.3com.com (02/10/91)
>[Moderator's Note: Ah yes, Lafayette! There was a nice Lafayette store >in Chicago on Wabash Avenue until about 1968 or so ... I bought a few >things from them, but mostly for my stereo: a pre-amp, cartridges, a >couple of speakers, a reverb unit, etc. PAT] Ah yes, Lafayette! I lived in Plainview, NY, one town over from Syosset, the home of Lafayette Radio Electronics, Inc. on Jericho Turnpike. This large warehouse building had a large store on the first floor, complete with separate car stereo room, home stereo room and ham/ cb room. It also had the mother-lode, the Lafayette Outlet Store or, as we called it, the junk-room. If you wanted something that wasn't on the floor or in stock in the small specialty rooms, you had to go through the catalog procedure. You filled out an order form and brought it to counter B, where it was checked, priced and placed in a pneumatic tube to be sent to "the back." Later, the number on your order was called on the PA, you went to the counter, picked up the paperwork for your order, went to the cashier, paid, and went to counter C where your order was delivered. Then, when you left, the guard punched a hole in your receipt. Sometimes amazing things were found in the package that came from "the back." Once an order for one CB ground plane antenna resulted in a case of six. Returning the extra five resulted in a gift certificate for $100 for the lucky recipient. Another time, an order for a bunch of small parts included, as a bonus, a Dremel Tool with accessories. Of course, lots of time, you got an "out of stock." We used to say that you could open up a Lafayette store with nothing but catalogs, order forms and an out-of-stock stamp. Lafayette declined in the seventies, and I believe it was gone by about 1980. Last year, I installed (for my father) a Lafayette HB-525-C CB Radio. It's 23 channels, but still worketh fine. [Moderator's Note: The same thing was true at Allied's store. You could sometimes wait thirty minutes for the stock room to deliver your purchase to the cashier. If you beefed to one of the supervisors, then they would call on the phone to someone in stock known as 're-check', and it was the job of 're-check' to find out where your order was in the stream. It got lost, you say? The supervisor would raise hell and fill out a priority ticket and send it up the air tube to the back. Now you might wait another five minutes but the order would show up -or - an 'out of stock' slip. If you went in that store the minute they opened the door on Sunday you could conceivably get out within thirty minutes *if* you knew exactly what you wanted and the order went up the pneumatic tube to stock (and credit approval) at the same time time. If you went in as much as an hour later the store was swarming with people; both credit approval and the stock room would be running 15-20 minutes in response time and you could expect to be in the store a couple hours provided your stuff was 'in stock'. But they had --everything-- under the sun in electronics/radio/stereo gear. If you couldn't get it there, then forget it! And God forbid the credit people send a note back through the tube saying 'send the customer to the office ...'; that meant another 10-20 minute delay while credit had you take a number and wait to be interviewed and/or fill out more paperwork for them. PAT