Lafayette Radio Electronics Corporation was an American
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...
and
electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
manufacturer
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...
and
retailer
Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...
from approximately 1931 to 1981, headquartered in
Syosset, New York, a
Long Island suburb of
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. The company sold radio sets,
Amateur radio (Ham) equipment,
citizens band (CB) radios and related communications equipment,
electronic components, microphones, public address systems, and tools through their company owned and branded chain of retail outlets and by mail-order.
History
![LREqslcard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/LREqslcard.jpg)
"Wholesale Radio Service" was established in the early 1920s by Abraham Pletman in New York City. Radios sold by the company were trademarked “Lafayette” in July 1931. Following a
Federal Trade Commission action in 1935, Wholesale Radio Service became "Radio Wire Television, Inc.". A 1939 company catalog bore the names Radio Wire Television Co. Inc. and "Lafayette Radio Corporation". In 1948, the company issued a catalog under the name “Lafayette-Concord” and called itself the “world’s largest radio supply organization”. In 1952, a catalog was issued using only the Lafayette name.
Lafayette Radio Electronics (LRE) soon became a thriving
mail-order catalog
Mail order is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote methods such as:
* Sending an order form in the mail
* Placing a telephone call
* Placing a ...
business; the electronic components it sold were useful to amateur radio operators and electronic hobbyists in areas where such components were unavailable in local retail outlets. Lafayette's main competitors were
Radio Shack
RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921.
At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...
,
Allied Radio,
Heathkit
Heathkit is the brand name of kits and other electronic products produced and marketed by the Heath Company. The products over the decades have included electronic test equipment, high fidelity home audio equipment, television receivers, amateu ...
, and "
mom and pop
]
A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of gestati ...
" (independent) radio dealers throughout the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
. Early Lafayette Radio stores were located in
Jamaica, N.Y. and
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
in the mid-1950s. The electronics kits were produced in the Jamaica facility.
Lafayette advertised heavily in major U.S. consumer electronics magazines of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly ''
Audio
Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to:
Sound
* Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound
*Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum
* Digital audio, representation of sou ...
,
High Fidelity,
Popular Electronics
''Popular Electronics'' was an American magazine published by John August Media, LLC, and hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com. The magazine was started by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soo ...
,
Popular Mechanics
''Popular Mechanics'' (sometimes PM or PopMech) is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do-it-yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation and transportation o ...
,'' and ''
Stereo Review
''Sound & Vision'' is an American magazine, purchased by AVTech Media Ltd. (UK) in March 2018, covering home theater, audio, video and multimedia consumer products. Before 2000, it had been published for most of its history as ''Stereo Review''. ...
''. The company offered a free 400-page catalog filled with descriptions of vast quantities of electronic gear, including microphones, speakers, tape recorders, and other components.
In 1981, Lafayette Radio entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sold its New York area stores to
Circuit City.
Retail stores
![1961 - Lafayette Radio Electronics - 20 North 7th St - Allentown PA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/1961_-_Lafayette_Radio_Electronics_-_20_North_7th_St_-_Allentown_PA.jpg)
Until the 1960s, many independent retailers in some markets became Lafayette Radio "Associate Stores", which were displaced when the company expanded. These stores were supported from headquarters at 111 Jericho Turnpike in Syosset, NY and a warehouse in Hauppauge, NY. A limited selection of product was stocked, with full access to a catalog with a wide variety of parts, tubes, cameras, musical instruments, kits, gadgets and branded gear that could be ordered and delivered through the local store. The company made major investments in what were called ''sound rooms'' to demonstrate hi-fi equipment, using custom switch panels and acoustic treatments in an attempt to duplicate a home listening environment and offer fair comparison with an assortment of branded hi-fi gear.
Managers were rewarded for maximizing gross profit margins and inventory "turns", which led to frequent out-of-stock situations, often remedied by frequent cross-town inter-store transfers. Each store had a repair shop on site with a part-time technician. Some locations had multiple full-time service technicians. Others had service departments that operated independently of the store but under the same ownership. Stores ranged in size from 2,000 to .
By the late 1970s, Lafayette expanded to major markets across the country, struggling to compete with
Radio Shack
RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921.
At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...
, which was purchased by Tandy Leather Co. in 1963. Lafayette ran into major financial difficulty when the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...
(FCC) expanded a new
citizens band radio
Citizens band radio (also known as CB radio), used in many countries, is a land mobile radio system, a system allowing short-distance person-to-many persons bidirectional voice communication among individuals, using two way radios operating on ...
("CB") spectrum to 40 channels in 1977. Lafayette's buyers had firm commitments to accept delivery of thousands of older design units capable of only 23 channels, and were not able to liquidate the inventory without taking a serious loss. Eventually, all of the old CB radios were sold for under $40.
With fewer than 100 stores, far fewer than the aggressively expanding Radio Shack's thousands of local outlets, Lafayette Radio remained more of a dedicated enthusiasts' store than a mass marketer. The company was also hurt by the advent of electronics retailers relying on aggressive marketing techniques and competitive pricing in the late 1970s. Many experienced managers departed. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1981 and most Lafayette stores in the state of
New York closed by the end of the year.
Approximately two thirds of company-owned stores were closed immediately. According to one employee, they were "given 48 hours to tear the entire store down, get everything boxed that had a valid and current stock number, and get it on a truck to take it back to Syosset (Lafayette’s Long Island warehouse). Anything that wasn’t on the official inventory sheets was to be discarded".
In 1981, Lafayette Radio entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Several Lafayette stores were purchased by
Circuit City of Richmond, Virginia. Of the 150 stores that Lafayette had once owned, eight stores remained when Circuit City took over. In order to keep the Lafayette name, which was popular in New York, Circuit City changed the store names to "Lafayette-Circuit City". However, these store locations were much smaller than a standard Circuit City, and did not carry major appliances, which Circuit City carried at the time. The stores were eventually closed as Circuit City left the New York Market (only to return later). The Syosset repair center was kept open a year after the last store closing to handle warranty coverage. Lafayette-Circuit City used the phrase "no haggling" in its ad campaign, which featured celebrities such as Don King, in trying to demonstrate that the lowest price was always posted, unlike many competitors in where you would have to bargain with the sales person for a lower price. This approach, however, did not work, and Lafayette-Circuit City fell due to competition from other New York area electronic retailers such as Newmark and Lewis, Trader Horn, The Wiz, Crazy Eddie, and PC Richard.
As of 2003, the Lafayette brand name was re-launched at the CES show that year. Their products are only offered through special dealers and limited retail stores.
Products
Lafayette's products ranged from individual resistors, capacitors and components to stereos and two-way radios for
amateur radio,
CBers, and
shortwave listeners. Many were dedicated types with special functions, such as VHF receivers for police and fire channels built into a CB radio. The company's best selling products were often shortwave receivers, parts, and portable radios. In the 1960s, many Lafayette brand radios were rebranded
Trio-Kenwood sets. A significant share of 1960s and 1970s vintage Lafayette hi-fi gear was manufactured by a Japanese subcontractor named "Planet Research". "Criterion" brand speakers were built by several offshore and some domestic assemblers. Science kits were popular, and Lafayette offered the "Novatron", a "Miniature Atom Smasher" (
van de Graaff generator
A Van de Graaff generator is an electrostatic generator which uses a moving belt to accumulate electric charge on a hollow metal globe on the top of an insulated column, creating very high electric potentials. It produces very high voltage
...
), Model F-371.
While the catalog heavily promoted their own branded products, Lafayette also carried models from many other hi-fi manufacturers of the era, including
Marantz,
Fisher
Fisher is an archaic term for a fisherman, revived as gender-neutral.
Fisher, Fishers or The Fisher may also refer to:
Places
Australia
*Division of Fisher, an electoral district in the Australian House of Representatives, in Queensland
*Elect ...
,
Pioneer
Pioneer commonly refers to a settler who migrates to previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited land.
In the United States pioneer commonly refers to an American pioneer, a person in American history who migrated west to join in settling and de ...
,
Sansui,
AR,
Dynaco
Founded by David Hafler and Ed Laurent in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1955, Dynaco was an American hi-fi audio system manufacturer popular in the 1960s and 1970s for its wide range of affordable, yet high quality audio components..Dunn, Greg, ...
,
KLH,
Wharfedale
Wharfedale ( ) is the valley of the upper parts of the River Wharfe and one of the Yorkshire Dales. It is situated within the districts of Craven and Harrogate in North Yorkshire, and the cities of Leeds and Bradford in West Yorkshire. It i ...
,
Bozak, BIC,
BSR McDonald,
Garrard,
Dual,
TEAC,
Akai
Akai ( ja, 赤井, ) is a Hong Kong manufacturer of consumer electronics. It was founded as Akai Electric Company Ltd in Tokyo, Japan, in 1946. Grande Holdings in Hong Kong purchased the Akai brand, and now distributes various electronic produ ...
,
Shure
Shure Incorporated is an American audio products corporation. It was founded by Sidney N. Shure in Chicago, Illinois, in 1925 as a supplier of radio parts kits. The company became a consumer and professional audio-electronics manufacturer of mi ...
, Empire,
Pickering, Electro-Voice,
JVC,
Panasonic
formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...
,
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...
and others.
The catalogs and advertising helped promote the concept of high-fidelity sound to customers, some of whom lived many miles away from major electronics stores, during a time when only the largest urban areas had dedicated "stereo" stores. Lafayette also offered TV vacuum
tube testing
Tube or tubes may refer to:
* ''Tube'' (2003 film), a 2003 Korean film
* ''The Tube'' (TV series), a music related TV series by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom
* "Tubes" (Peter Dale), performer on the Soccer AM television show
* Tube (band), a ...
, for customers who wanted to service their own televisions.
Lafayette was quick to jump on industry trends, embracing first open reel tape recorders and later
8-track cartridge recorders and
compact cassette recorders,
along with an array of gimmicks, supplies, and accessories.
During the mid-1970s, the company's stores were one of few places one could actually experience four channel ("quadraphonic") sound.
However the lack of a single industry standard (Columbia
SQ vs. JVC's
CD-4 and Sansui's
QS) dampened sales, and the experiment ended in 1976.
Lafayette also sold a variety of electronic musical equipment made by different manufacturers. There were solid-body and hollow-body electric guitars, probably made by
Teisco
Teisco was a Japanese musical instrument manufacturing company from 1948 until 1967, when the brand "Teisco" was acquired by Kawai (河合楽器製作所; Kawai Gakki Seisakusho). The company produced guitars as well as synthesizers, microphones ...
or
Harmony. Microphones, amplifiers, and various electronic effects such as reverbs were available, many of which sported the Lafayette brand name, most notably the Echo Verb and Echo Verb II.
Among the most famous guitar effects that Lafayette sold was the Roto-Vibe and
Uni-Vibe
The Uni-Vibe, also marketed as the Jax Vibra-Chorus,Harry Shapiro, Michael Heatley, Roger Mayer''Jimi Hendrix Gear'', page 120 Voyageur Press is a footpedal-operated phaser or phase shifter for creating chorus and vibrato simulations for elec ...
, used by many musicians, most notably
Jimi Hendrix.
Robin Trower
Robin Leonard Trower (born 9 March 1945) is an English rock guitarist who achieved success with Procol Harum throughout 1967–1971, and then again as the bandleader of his own power trio known as the Robin Trower Band.
Biography
Robin Trowe ...
,
Stevie Ray Vaughan and others later used the effect to emulate Hendrix's sounds and achieve new ones of their own.
Gallery
File:Lafayette-LT-725A-stereo-tuner.jpg, Lafayette LT-725A solid state stereo tuner
File:HA-700.png, Lafayette HA-700 vacuum tube shortwave radio receiver
A shortwave radio receiver is a radio receiver that can receive one or more shortwave bands, between 1.6 and 30 MHz. A shortwave radio receiver often receives other broadcast bands, such as FM radio, Longwave and Mediumwave. Shortwave radio receiv ...
File:Lafayette Solid State Fuzz Sound.jpg, Lafayette solid state fuzz sound guitar pedal
File:Vintage Lafayette Transistor Radio, Model FS-206, AM Band, 6 Transistors, Made In Japan, Circa 1960 (48577396056).jpg, Lafayette Model FS-206 Transistor radio
A transistor radio is a small portable radio receiver that uses transistor-based circuitry. Following the invention of the transistor in 1947—which revolutionized the field of consumer electronics by introducing small but powerful, convenient ...
File:Vintage Lafayette 20-In-1 Electronic Project Kit, Stock No. 99-35214, Lafayette Radio Electronics Corporation (LRE), Made In Japan, Instruction Booklet Copyright 1970 (37284927025).jpg, Lafayette 20-In-1 Electronic Project Kit
See also
*
Allied Electronics
Allied Electronics & Automation is a United States based authorized distributor of industrial automation products, electronic components and electromechanical products. Allied is a subsidiary of RS Group, and it is an ISO 9001:2008+AS9120A cert ...
*
Heathkit
Heathkit is the brand name of kits and other electronic products produced and marketed by the Heath Company. The products over the decades have included electronic test equipment, high fidelity home audio equipment, television receivers, amateu ...
*
Radio Shack
RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921.
At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...
References
External links
{{commons category
Vintage Lafayette Catalog pagesat ''Early Television''
Lafayette Amateur Radio Equipment at ''RigReference.com''
Amateur radio companies
Consumer electronics retailers in the United States
Electronic kit manufacturers
Companies based in Nassau County, New York
Defunct manufacturing companies based in New York (state)
Radio manufacturers