Someone brought up that topic. Most people who were stationed around Germany in the 1970s/1980s....remember the MWR-run Audio-Photo Shop.
This was the place where you'd walk in and they had three key functions. They had REAL stereo equipment and geeky sound-tech guys who would talk for an entire hour about how the Eagles or Steely Dan ought to sound with the right speakers. Typically....Kenwood products got pushed heavily.
You'd walk in on a Saturday and a dozen folks would be standing around....with cash in their hands, and literally begging to buy something. There might have been three months of salary with some Air Force or Army guys....to be spent on the hardware.
The second key function was album sales. The newest stuff was trucked in and I would imagine that most shops were selling four-hundred albums per Saturday...easily.
The third key item was cameras. If you had some fascination or just wanted the very best....the Audio-Photo Shop had what you wanted.
I had a officer that I worked for in the 1980s who laid out the start-up of the MWR 'empire'. In the 1960s...the AAFES crowd (the BX folks) were literally being begged by Army and Air Force folks to sell them TVs and stereo equipment. They carried a marginal stock....didn't care if they sold equipment or not....and were not what you'd call customer-friendly.
So, someone within the Bitburg community convinced MWR (a separate group and no relation to the AAFES folks) that a small shop could be set up and provide profit to recreational folks. TVs and stereo equipment were delivered and the business deal on one base was set into motion. AAFES? The commentary was that they got ballistic and tried to get the wing commander to shut it down. His response was that a little competition didn't hurt.
In the space of roughly two years....other bases in Germany went to the same MWR operation. No one cites numbers, but I would take a guess that the Audio-Photo Shops probably had 90-percent of the business in their hands by the early 1970s. AAFES? They had existed for years without competition. They weren't capable of resolving this easily.
My first visit to a shop was in 1978 at Rhein Main. I probably spent over $2,000 over a two-year period at the shop. For a guy making $600 a month....it was a hefty amount. I still have two-hundred albums that I bought from that period.
In 1984 on my second tour....the shipper stole all my equipment coming back to Germany, and the Air Force had to pay for 'losses'. I walked back into the Ramstein Audio-Photo Shop and spent near $1,200 in a single afternoon.
By the late 1980s....the AAFES folks had figured out how to compete and had large display areas. They recruited some smart folks and improved the business scene. A lot of the big numbers slide back over to the AAFES crowd. Today, the Audio-Photo Shops are mostly non-existent. Part of the issue is that no one goes out to buy huge stereo equipment packages or high-end cameras.
You can go to any military guy who spent time in the 1970s or 1980s and bring up the topic....most all will have some story about a $700 camera, or a $1,500 Kenwood system. They will tell you how the sound goes with Blue Oyster Cult, or Bob Seger....if you have a premium speaker system. Today? The E-2 kid has a $300 speaker in his dorm room....hooked up to some download system, and he knows little beyond the band's name.
What happened to all the geeky guys or gals who worked in the shops? That's a question that I'd be interested in.
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