Fry's Electronics shuts down

Fry's Electronics, operating mostly in the western U.S. is going out of business.
An electronics super-store, Fry's had 31 stores in 9 states.

My local Fry's stopped selling cameras a long time ago. But it was still a great place
to buy hard drives, computer parts, and laptop computers.

So sad

www.frys.com

In the late eighties and nineties spent many hours in Fry's in Sunnyvale whilst I was out in the US training. Spent a fortune on books and components to bring back to the UK.

Good times.

Perfectly Frank wrote in post #19199990
Fry's Electronics, operating mostly in the western U.S. is going out of business.
An electronics super-store, Fry's had 31 stores in 9 states.

My local Fry's stopped selling cameras a long time ago. But it was still a great place
to buy hard drives, computer parts, and laptop computers.

So sad

www.frys.com

Last time I went into a Fry’s was a few of years ago, the store shelves were mostly empty and the parking lot had only a few cars in it. I remember when I went in one to do Christmas shopping and the line to pay went all the way to the back of the store, they had something like 60 registers open.

When I lived in Illinois, Tiger direct was my go-to for computer parts because it's warehouse was just a couple miles from my house. When Fry's came in, it was a fun store to visit, but Tiger nearly always beat them on price. Now I'm in Dallas and have 3 Fry's stores in the area. Over the last 5 years or so, they have really plummeted in both quality and availability. The stores looked run down and messy and their in store selection was horrible. Sad to see them go, but was sort of expecting it, at least based on the two stores I frequented here in the Dallas area.

Actually, sort of surprised they did not pursue a pure online model. Keep one or two warehouses and sell everything else online.

gjl711 wrote in post #19200051
Actually, sort of surprised they did not pursue a pure online model. Keep one or two warehouses and sell everything else online.

I have spent many hours in Fry's Sunnyvale and Palo Alto stores, back in their heydays about 30-35 years ago. I built a number of PCs using components purchased at Fry's, and even still have a room airconditioner purchased there after they expanded beyond computer stuff. It has been probably over 15 years since I have been in one of the stores. It was sad when they closed the Palo Alto location, which was once the third largest cannery of fruits and vegetables in the world, because the land owners wanted to do something else with the property.
The founder of Fry's originated in the retail grocery store business in CA. That model was well reflected in the layout of the stores. I guess that was too ingrained in the next generation's thinking, and they didn't bring in enough outsiders with new ideas and agree to alter the business model.

Always a fun trip to Fry's in southern CA. Sent my students there on field trips in the day so they could be exposed to its many wonders.

I remember going into Fry's Electronics with my father, when Fry's was selling the very basic electronics parts of transistors and diodes for the do-it-yourself electronic hobbyists in the middle 70s. This was one of their first stores on Camden Ave, in San Jose, California. When the Fry's store in Campbell opened, I would go in, many a times, for purchasing computer parts to build x486 and Pentium 1 systems. They always had the parts I needed, and it was a wonder to walk through their aisles and just look at all the stuff there. Fry's just kept adding more stuff beyond the basic electronics parts, to computer components, to consumer electronics, to cell phones, small kitchen appliances, big kitchen appliances, children's toys, and finally As-Seen-On-TV junk. And Fry's had the retail store space to stuff everything in it.

The second thing I remember about Fry's was their customer service and floor sales support staff. They could never improve on their customer service, or did not care. Fry's Electronics was never a place for a newbie to come in, asking for computer help. If they did, the customer service staff would always point to the latest and most expensive product to fit their need--even if it was not. Even I, a more tech savvy person, would find it a challenge to purchase computer components at Fry's--like 15 different routers and wireless gateways they used to stock. I think I spent an hour going through the specs on the different routers and gateways to find the best one for the price point I wanted. Of course, Fry's would only sell the latest, more expensive components, which may not work for older systems that I had. So there was always an endless need to upgrade--and buy more upgrade stuff at Fry's. Ironically, the best customer service people at Fry's were the computer memory, processor, and hard drive sales support folks--they had to know their stuff, and they did. I purchased plenty of computer memory, and hard drives from them.

The third thing I remember about Fry's was their customer returns. There seemed to always be a line of customer returns in the Campbell store--the Campbell store was six blocks from my house. The Fry's CSRs would take back to the returns for money back, or store credit, and toss the stuff in these big metal, mesh bins. As I would walk into the Fry's Campbell store, I'd glance into the bins, and I'd see a lot of different computer parts, or accessories. The returned stuff would be repacked with shipping tape, and placed back out on the store shelves to sell as opened inventory--whether it worked or not. You could really tell when a computer product was a lemon by the amount of opened inventory boxes were sitting on the store shelves over the new, unopened brand boxes.

All the closed Fry's stores had different themes. The Campbell store theme was Egyptian, while the Sunnyvale store theme was inside a computer. The Burbank store theme was a 1950s UFO crashing into its store front. All these stores have large retail space, with the Sunnyvale store providing a huge parking lot. I wonder what will happen to these wacky theme stores?

Fry's only hired cheap labor for their staff, so the knowlegge in them was minimal. The staff for microproocessors and RAM and harddrives was probably the exception to that statement.

I remember building a new PC with Fry's parts once. I tried 3 different keyboards, all in factory fresh packaging, before I found one that worked properly with the motherboard that I had purchased. As I had previously built and/or upgraded multiple PCs for myself, I knew it was not because I was a novice at homebuilt units. And since factory built PCs had come down in price, the imcompatability issues with keyboard selection had turned me off the idea of ever building a PC for myself again...less headache simply buying prebuilt PC than having to drive back on forth on multiple trips to find compatible products to use. Not Fry's fault that PC modules were not compatible. It is indeed nice to have factory customer service behind their fully assembled product!

Wilt wrote in post #19211880
Fry's only hired cheap labor for their staff, so the knowlegge in them was minimal. The staff for microproocessors and RAM and harddrives was probably the exception to that statement.

I remember building a new PC with Fry's parts once. I tried 3 different keyboards, all in factory fresh packaging, before I found one that worked properly with the motherboard that I had purchased. As I had previously built and/or upgraded multiple PCs for myself, I knew it was not because I was a novice at homebuilt units. And since factory built PCs had come down in price, the imcompatability issues with keyboard selection had turned me off the idea of ever building a PC for myself again...less headache simply buying prebuilt PC than having to drive back on forth on multiple trips to find compatible products to use. Not Fry's fault that PC modules were not compatible. It is indeed nice to have factory customer service behind their fully assembled product!

I used to mostly go to the Anaheim store, I was never impressed with the knowledge of any of the sales associates I had dealings with, they did sell a lot of variety at one point but over the years the internet really cut into their business.

I was a Fry's fan forever. Last few years have been pretty awful. Huge stores with 2/3 of the shelves empty. Pretty depressing.

I read somewhere that Fry's has only been stocking consignment merchandise for a while now. Vendors don't get paid until Fry's makes a sale. Not a ton of vendors lining up for that deal. And the sales staff on the floor doesn't get a lot of training under that system either.

Too bad, though. They went the way of Radio Shack for a lot of the same reasons. When RC go-carts start dominating any store's inventory, the end is nigh.

drsilver wrote in post #19212084
I was a Fry's fan forever. Last few years have been pretty awful. Huge stores with 2/3 of the shelves empty. Pretty depressing.

I read somewhere that Fry's has only been stocking consignment merchandise for a while now. Vendors don't get paid until Fry's makes a sale. Not a ton of vendors lining up for that deal. And the sales staff on the floor doesn't get a lot of training under that system either.

Too bad, though. They went the way of Radio Shack for a lot of the same reasons. When RC go-carts start dominating any store's inventory, the end is nigh.

I was told the same thing about the consignment merchandise by someone at the Anaheim, California store. I figured they were done back then and that was a few years ago.

It’s amazing how long they’ve held on. I remember going into their stores because they had some crazy store only deals to entice people to go in physically. Their selection was very meh the last time I was there and I ended up spending a lot more time in MicroCenter.

I went to the Sacramento store many times. I didn't like their policies or how they treated the customers, so I stopped going.