In a recent thread Derek Marshall commented that he had never been in a Laskys HiFi store. Back in the 1980s the one in Bristol was one of the shops I would always visit when in town to buy some clothes, LPs etc. The only thing big that I got from them was my first cassette recorder back in 1976. By the the 1980s they moved up market, competing with the local Sony Centre but with an extensive range from all the major Japanese HiFi manufacturers like Akai and Pioneer. The shop in Bristol was large and spacious unlike Dixons who were selling a small range of HiFi together with Cameras, TV games, calculators and other gadgets from a shop half the size Since Laskys seemed to disappear sometime in the 1990s before the internet became popular it is difficult to find out much about them. There is information saying that they were bought/bailed out by discount warehouse Comet. The best I found was this thread https://www.hifiwigwam.com/forum/topic/132763-laskys-and-tandy/page/3/ Derek's post inspired me to look on Ebay again and I found a 1973 catalgue/price list. The most I have paid for a catalogue but it is 48 tabloid size pages of retro goodness, including the Sanyo M2400 model of Radio Cassette my Mother bought that year (elsewhere for slightly cheaper) and to my surprise the first Ham Radio transceiver I bought (used) in 1983. Some parts of the 1973 catalogue reminds me of Tandy (Radio Shack) who only opened in the UK in 1974. I don't remember Laskys selling things like test meters or the Ham Radio Gear. By the 1980s they were specialising in hiFi and to a lesser extent TV and Video. Anyway here are five sample pages from the catalogue including Sony and Sanyo portables. According to the bank of England Multiply by 12 to get 2019 prices. That means my mother spent the equivalent of £480 on her mono Sanyo Radio Cassette ! I knew it cost her over a weeks wages (as a Teacher) so that sounds about right. British people don't like haggling so the prices shown are what people would have paid. However, I am sure they would have checked the prices at several shops (e.g. The Sony Centre which was only a five minute walk away) before making a purchase. If you want to see more pages let me know. The HiFi ranges from Sinclair to Quad with most of the major Japanese manufacturers in=between. p.s If you download the images you can zoom in enough to read the small print.
I love all of those old ads, everything looked cool and exciting but the hard-core sales guys were a pain. We had ABC Warehouse, Fretter Appliance and Highland Appliance. All of these guys would fight over sales and would price-match if they had the same product. If you scanned the mega-ads in Sundays Paper, they always had an "Easter Egg" Special, something discounted but not really highlighted. We also had a few smaller guys around downtown that had every inch of the store crammed with a product, even though they were small you could spend an hour checking out all of the different equipment. Going over to Tokyo is an eye opener, they still have mega-stores with tons of stereo equipment from entry-level to high-end.
Since @SONY-BOY is on here tonight time for a few more pages. I wonder if he remembers Laskys. £2700 in 2019 for an 18" Colour TV ! We actually got our first Colour set that year, but it was a rented 18" Pye which i have since learnt retailed for about £165, a mere £1980 in 2019 money.
I've got the Sony STR-6046 Reciever, a super beautiful model with a solid wood case. The dial lights are really nice, I think green, yellow and some red. This would have been a really nice family unit back then, better than most stuff.
