For fleeting moments at least, Richard Roth's business, his craft and his life, seemed normal. Almost like the old days at Phillips Radio Television. Before technology pulled a fast one on him and other TV repairmen.
A late afternoon sun gleamed off a brand-new Toshiba 50-inch digital light processing set, as Roth and his son, also named Richard, unloaded it from their minivan with the cracked front windshield. Together, they eased it into the customer's northwest Canton house. They set it up and explained how it worked.
A $1,500 sale to a longtime customer. But then again, nothing like them at all. "We're a thing of the past, a dying breed," said the older Roth, now 64.
With the same medium build, the younger Roth resembles his dad - minus the balding head. Young Richard began working in his dad's shop on Cleveland Avenue NW when he was just 12. He knows every inch of the place.
But neither he nor his two siblings followed their dad into the business. Young Richard is a social studies and government teacher at Fairless High School. His dad had recruited him for an afternoon to help with the delivery.
The TV was too large for one man to carry. The older Roth complimented the customer's new hairdo, referring to her by name. He chatted with her husband.
He stood in a corner, holding cable and electric cords off the ground while the customer vacuumed the new TV's destined spot. "That's our business, right there," Roth said. It's doing the little things, but still barely hanging on.
In the last 25 years, the number of electronics service centers like Phillips' fell from 20,000 to 6,000, according to the National Electronics Service Dealers Association, a Fort Worth, Texas, trade group. With an electronics trade school in Chicago behind him, Richard Roth went to work for business founder William Phillips 40 years ago. After Phillips died, Roth and his wife, Carol, bought the company in 1977.
It was a great place to work. To make money. As a Zenith dealer, he sold $500,000 a month in new products from his showroom.
Both floors of the shop bustled. He worked side by side with longtime employees such as Chuck, Ed and Dave. There was so much work, he needed two secretaries on the first floor.
Below, in the shop and garage, two employees fixed radios. Two more worked on TVs. One handled nothing but VCRs.
Another was on the road, making house calls. "We had a lot of fun," Roth recalled. These days, it's only Roth and his wife.
It feels as busy as ever, but it's different now. The very technology he's trained to fix keeps getting better. Roth takes a class to learn all the new technology, but then it changes again.
It's become so good that manufacturers make TVs, VCRs and DVD players cheaper and longer-lasting than ever. That's good for customers, bad for repairmen. "People always assume it's the big box stores that hurt us," Roth said.
"That's only one little piece of it. There have always been big stores ..
. remember Home Centers? I mean it when I say they can't compete with us.
" Encircled by a half-dozen TVs in various states of repair, Roth pulled on his wraparound magnifying eyeglasses. Used to be a couple out of every 100 new TV sets needed to be fixed right out of the shipping box. That doesn't happen anymore.
Roth has seen all the changes. From cathode tubes to computerized circuitry. To microscopic chips.
Analog to digital. Black and white to color. Plasma, LCD and DLP.
Plenty of his business comes as a factory-authorized repair service for Toshiba. Ironically, that means he fixes TVs under warranty, sold by big box stores, such as H.H.
Gregg. "We work on the component level," he said. Long gone are the days of carrying a tube caddy into a house.
He still does in-home service calls. But lots of times he'll try to fix it over the phone before charging $89.95 for a service call.
Plenty of times, it's the silliest little thing - a customer pushed the wrong button on the remote and can't get out of the mess. He once was able to fix five or more TVs a day. Now, it can take weeks to order and get a modular board just to finish one set.
"Unfortunately when you lose people like us ...
these guys today haven't been through the transition," Roth said. "One day they were working in lingerie, the next day they're working in electronics." He remembers the last black and white he sold, in the 1970s.
It was a Zenith for $279.95. A floor model, wood-cased console set.
Roth still sells new TVs, though most of his customers don't realize it, because his showroom is sparsely stocked. The VCR repair area of the shop is now nothing more than a cluttered bench of useless tools, including a Beta repair kit. The Beta format was overwhelmed by VHS 20 years ago.
Now, all tapes are being replaced by digital discs. Right next to the bench hangs a life-sized drawing of Roth the repairman. A little neighbor girl made it years ago.
It's remained on display since. "It was good for about 10 years," Roth said. When VCRs cost as much as $1,000, it made sense to fix them.
But when you can buy a new one for less than $100, what's the point? They became disposable and Roth's work on them becomes dispensable. Roth had designed the radio work area, complete with a compartment window attached to the garage.
It was all so efficient. Cars would pull in to the garage and repairmen could work on them right there. But who wants to fix a car radio?
Eight-foot-high metal shelving holds belts, adapters, transistors, modules, tuners. Box of rainbow wires. Dusty manuals that showed the ins and outs of repairs on Delco and Crosely radios.
The TV repair area, though, is a different story. Shelved walls of manuals surround Roth in his workshop. Zenith, RCA, GE, all the familiar names.
He used to look at them when he needed to find a diagram of the guts of a TV. But every last one of them has been replaced by a single program on his computer. With a click of a mouse, he can study any TV's make and model innards.
The screen door at Philips Radio TV slowly crept open. A man, leaning on a cane, inched his way inside. Richard Roth greeted him with a smile.
The man began to explain his problem. "Meet you around back," Roth said. Down the steps, and through the workshop, Roth grabbed a handful of tools along the way.
He didn't know the man's name, but recognized the face. The man was a customer from the past. And he was in a predicament.
His name was Dick Mani. Mani's wife of 58 years, Mary Ellen, waited in the passenger seat of their car as Roth approached. Mrs.
Mani had broken the CD player. On their drive back to Ohio on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, she accidentally slid their toll booth ticket into the CD player and it got stuck inside. Roth climbed into the driver's seat.
He pushed the eject button. Nothing. Armed with a pair of hemastats, he tried to grab whatever was plugging the player.
No luck. "You sure it's in there," he asked. "It's in there," she said, demonstrating the mishap again.
"Boy, I don't know," Roth said shaking his head. Finally, he went into the shop and grabbed a CD. The player wouldn't take hold of it.
Darnded if there isn't something in that player after all, Roth said. Then, he had to break them the bad news. He could fix it OK, but he'd have to take the player out of the car and take it apart - maybe as much as a $150 or $200 charge.
Maybe, he suggested, they'd want to sleep on it before making any decisions. HANGING ON Richard Roth, owner of Phillips Radio Television, has watched the repair business evolve. Repairmen are becoming more of a rarity these days.
CHANGES Shelves of repair manuals, no longer needed, line the workshop at Phillips Radio Television. All the information is now available on a computer. STAFF Years ago, two employees worked only on fixing radios.
Today, Richard Roth and his wife, Carol, run the whole business. You must be a user to post comments. Your comment will be published at the bottom of the story.
Once a comment is submitted, you will not be able to edit or delete the comment.
Story:
News RSS