Remembering Lafayette Radio

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When I was growing up, my friends were all reading comic books while I was reading the Allied, Radio Shack, Lafayette and Olson catalogs from cover to cover. On my desk right now are Lafayette '72 and '74 and an Allied Radio Shack '71 catalogs.
 
When I was growing up, my friends were all reading comic books while I was reading the Allied, Radio Shack, Lafayette and Olson catalogs from cover to cover. On my desk right now are Lafayette '72 and '74 and an Allied Radio Shack '71 catalogs.

I did the same thing and I also had all those catalogs from about the mid sixties until the mid seventies.

I had some kind of major brain aberration happen, however, and I didn't save them. :(

Doug
 
I have saved a half dozen or so and recently picked up a 1952 Sun Radio Audio Equipment Handbook at a flea market in Maine.
 
There was a 1976 catalog

I mail ordered from them at least as late as mid-1978. I still have the receiver (with Dolby FM!) up in the closet, but the main switch, which rotated from Off to A to B to A+B kept giving out. I replaced it with a Sony after I could no longer get it repaired.
 
I still have a Lafayette volt meter I bought in the early 60's. :chill
 
Having worked for Lafayette Radio from 1962 -1976, I must admit this thread brought back many, many memories. Yes, Lafayette was years ahead of the industry when it came to Quad, but newer management (circa 1975) started the company's decline - not the demise of quad. Those of us who worked there for so long did so for "security," only to discover when we left, that there was an entirely different world outside that retail chain, and a much better one at that too!

The "Criterion" house brand speaker for Lafayette underwent numerous changes too. Some of the Criterion models (mostly late 60's) were actually pretty decent, especially considering their low prices, but then the line became inconsistent with less expensive models outperforming costlier ones. At one point, an entire line was developed and manufactured in the U.S., with every aspect of the chain fully owned by Lafayette (all models had triple-digit numbers: Criterion 333, 555, 777, etc.) and the line was absolutely awful, causing the company to sell less of its own brand of speaker than in any of the previous years. Not only did the speakers sound horrible - especially the top of the line model, the Criterion 999 - but construction quality was dismal too.

Lafayette stereo gear was genuinely good, and a good value, but when it came to tape decks (many actually made by Nakamichi), the quality, and reliability were dismal. This was especially true with cassette decks where the excessive wow and flutter, and the auto shut-off mechanism's insistence of never working properly resulted in lots and lots of dissatisfied customers.

Yes, there were many fond memories of those years I worked at Lafayette, and the fact that all of the personnel who worked at Lafayette stores actually offered genuine, and knowledgeable service to customers (something hard to find today), put the stores in a class by themselves. Still, some of the "dirt" behind the scenes is the stuff of legend.
 
My cuz and my good bud bought Criterion speakers in the 70's. Early 70's, like 71 or so. They still have them, and still use them. Blonde cabinets, and one is a 3 way the others are bookshelf and 2 way. I remember a time when if you wanted to buy local, Lafayette was the only place we could go to get mm carts or decent TT. It was not until like 73 or so that I remember getting catalogs in the mail for a place in CA that sold nice setups. They also included a extentable clip to " pass the highs around the room". If you went to any local store all you found was crap.
 
We had real component stereo around Chicago forever. After all, it was the home off Allied Radio. They had a showroom at 100 N. Western and a dozen stores in the '50's. There were also places like Musicraft and United Audio that had multiple locations, plus lots of independents. And at 5 Korvette City stores, they had a component hi-fi salon and the world's largest record department. In the '70's, it exploded, with streets that had 6 - 12 hi-fi stores within a mile.
 
We had real component stereo around Chicago forever. After all, it was the home off Allied Radio. They had a showroom at 100 N. Western and a dozen stores in the '50's. There were also places like Musicraft and United Audio that had multiple locations, plus lots of independents. And at 5 Korvette City stores, they had a component hi-fi salon and the world's largest record department. In the '70's, it exploded, with streets that had 6 - 12 hi-fi stores within a mile.

My past experience is a result of living in the navel of NY. Did you know where I grew up was called little chicago in the 50's?
 
In the '70's, it exploded, with streets that had 6 - 12 hi-fi stores within a mile.
Yep, too bad the Japan-made stuff got too expensive and now all we have is cheap junk, or ultra-expensive stuff like what Acoustic Sounds sells. Unless you're wealthy an iPod or phone has to do these days. In my case I've still got all my old stuff. Glad it all still works.
 
My systems are schizo. They're half vintage '70's and half modern stuff. The old stuff looks the sexiest. My B&K, Denon, Mission. Ortofon and Onkyo gear performs far better than nearly all of the vintage gear. Modern gear with vintage decoders, tape decks and demodulators are the hot ticket.
 
What city did you work in?

.

I worked at the main store in Syosset, Long Island (where I grew up) from '62 - '67, then a little over a year at another N.Y. location, Lynbrook. Three years in the Army and then after a stint on the store opening crew, which also converted existing 2-channel sound rooms to 4-channel, my own store in Manhasset, N.Y. opened up in the fall of '72. I left Lafayette in September, 1976 to accept a position as Assistant National Sales Manager for Pickering. Easily the best move ever in my entire career, and a whole 'nutha' world as compared to the grueling hours and low pay at Lafayette.

Around that time, serious competition was opening up against Lafayette, no longer leaving it as the place to go for stereo equipment. New management was also slow to react, or to respond at all to price competition, and sales dragged. One man - Arthur Blackburn - who was hired away from J.C.Penny as Lafayette's new president is solely to blame for the company's demise. Competition aside, approximately $!6 million worth of obsolete 23- channel CB equipment was on its way to Lafayette, after the FTC banned the sale of all 23 channel CB merchandise in favor of 44 channel products. Against the recommendation of all upper management, Blackburn accepted delivery of $16 million worth of product that couldn't be sold. The company never recovered from such a staggering loss.
 
Which? I lived in the area then.

I was referring to the Lafayette store which I managed from 1972 -1976. There were a couple of other audio retailers nearby: Audio by Zimmit and a high-end place called Audio Breakthroughs. I think there was a Stereo Exchange store not too far away. The closest other Lafayette store was in Westbury.

"My" store was an experiment by Lafayette that failed miserably: it was supposed to be exclusively Home Entertainment, without any parts, tubes, CB's, antennas and all the rest of the stuff one normally expected to find in a Lafayette store. The company spent a fortune designing all-new cabinetry and display cases, as well as an unusual paint theme that actually went across the ceiling to the other side of the store. Most customers walked in, and just stood there, and asked, "THIS is Lafayette???"

The store was converted to a mainstream Lafayette store in 1975, but the location was a bad one (smack in the middle of the "Miracle Mile" in Manhasset), where the only other retailers were exclusive, ultra-high end snobby type establishments, which Lafayette most definitely was NOT. I guess you could use the analogy of placing a Radio Shack on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. You can imagine how that would go over...

I also discovered, years after I left, that the townspeople of Manhasset never wanted Lafayette there in the first place, which could easily explain the year-long delay in getting the store opened. Once the store was opened, I was repeatedly harassed by the local town government . For example, they suddenly decided that our sign, that, like all other Lafayette stores, said, "Lafayette Radio Electronics," originally approved and installed long before the store actually opened, wasn't one sign, but TEN signs, because they somehow decided after the store had been open a couple of years that each letter in the name "Lafayette" was a sign into itself, and we had to connect each letter with an aluminum strip, and then to the box that said, "Radio Electronics." Giving local officals free TV antennas and rotors was the answer to the harassment, though I suspect it continued long after I left. Isn't graft wonderful?
 
I...Giving local officals free TV antennas and rotors was the answer to the harassment, though I suspect it continued long after I left. Isn't graft wonderful?
Rotors are cool. Always wanted one back in the day.
 
Before cable and satellite, I had a rotor, tower and long-range antenna. I could get Chicago, Milwaukee, Rockford, Madison, WI & St. Joseph, MI. Made it great to watch Cubs, Sox & Brewers games.

Me too. I had this monster Channel Master antenna, so big I almost killed myself putting it up. Then I got one of those fancy motor control boxes that would remember the direction of each station, so when you selected say Channel 3, the antenna would spin to the preset you had for that station. Ah, nothing like the old "analog" days! :) (Used to walk 5 miles in a snow storm to get to school....., etc) :mad:@:
 
I was referring to the Lafayette store which I managed from 1972 -1976. There were a couple of other audio retailers nearby: Audio by Zimmit and a high-end place called Audio Breakthroughs. I think there was a Stereo Exchange store not too far away. The closest other Lafayette store was in Westbury.

"My" store was an experiment by Lafayette that failed miserably: it was supposed to be exclusively Home Entertainment, without any parts, tubes, CB's, antennas and all the rest of the stuff one normally expected to find in a Lafayette store. The company spent a fortune designing all-new cabinetry and display cases, as well as an unusual paint theme that actually went across the ceiling to the other side of the store. Most customers walked in, and just stood there, and asked, "THIS is Lafayette???"

The store was converted to a mainstream Lafayette store in 1975, but the location was a bad one (smack in the middle of the "Miracle Mile" in Manhasset), where the only other retailers were exclusive, ultra-high end snobby type establishments, which Lafayette most definitely was NOT. I guess you could use the analogy of placing a Radio Shack on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. You can imagine how that would go over...
I am amazed. I lived there then and would definitely have been interested but, somehow, I have no recollection of it. I did use Audio Breakthroughs as my "club" and there was, for a while, another audio shop across the street where I once bought a Sony receiver for my daughter but I do not recall it being a "Lafayette."
 
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