Fry's Electronics is shutting its doors for good

[Garion_55]

Source: https://www.theverge.com/

Fry’s Electronics, one of the last big brick-and-mortar electronics store chains in the United States — and a Silicon Valley institution in particular — is permanently closing nationwide, the company has officially confirmed Wednesday, following Tuesday evening reports from SF Bay Area broadcaster KRON4, as well as Bill Reynolds and Matthew Keys.


"After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry’s Electronics, Inc. (“Fry’s” or “Company”), has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic," reads a statement from Fry's.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the family-owned business had been pushed to the brink of extinction by online retailers like Amazon, Newegg and more. Initially, the company started a campaign to price-match any item you could find online. It added a children’s toy aisle, huge racks of As Seen on TV gadgets, even perfume. But things got worse. By 2019, what used to be a paradise of gadgets, computers, components, video games, audio equipment and appliances had turned into ghost warehouses filled with empty shelves.

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2021/2/24/22298616/frys-electronics-going-out-of-business

[samnsara]

1. nooooooooooooooooo :(

[jimfields33]

4. More jobs lost. Ugh!

[dalton99a]

2. Finally.

[still_one]

3. Very sad. I remember their first store in Sunnyvale

[bobalew]

32. Yeah, me , too. worked at Shugart

Associates, around the corner... even had a contract with Randy Fry, to fix Taiwanese IBM type PC boards, for a short while. Also knew his wife, Muni, when they owned the San Jose Bearcats, Arena Football team...

[AZSkiffyGeek]

5. They've been on life support for years

The ones in Phoenix have been mostly empty for ages.

[sobenji]

6. Bullshit. Not Covid related at all

Their shelves have been empty for years

[cstanleytech]

11. From what I gather it sounds more like the virus was the final nail in the coffin so it

is related to the virus a bit.
Their main fault though I think was not adapting with the times and rolling out an online presence like Newegg.

[dalton99a]

20. Yep. Their stores were practically dead in 2019

https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2019/12/09/why-are-frys-store-shelves-empty-two-weeks-before-christmas/
Why Are Fry’s Store Shelves Empty Two Weeks Before Christmas?
December 9, 2019 at 6:45 am

[paleotn]

23. Covid-19 has been the coup de grace for zombie retailers.

Sears is hanging on by a fingernail. JC Penny is right behind them. For all practical purposes, they're both dead.

[Garion_55]

7. I worked at the very first store

When there only was one store. Half the store was still fries groceries and the other half was computers and hard drives and printers and electronics.

I met all of the owners, the frys brothers multiple times they did a lot of training back then.

I stayed until the 1st out of state store opened up.

The end was coming for years but it's still a sad day.

[cstanleytech]

12. Let me guess. They began to gradually cut the number of full timers and shifted more and more

to using part timers?
I ask because from my experience it seems like when a retailer does that like Kmart and Bi-Lo (a former grocery chain in my area) begins to do that it is a sign that they are on the way out.

[snort]

21. The Fry's in Prescott was our go to store for groceries for at least 20 years.

I liked it.

[harumph]

8. microcenter

Fry's problem is that they tried to be everything to everybody.

[MineralMan]

9. Kind of sad, really.

I remember making road trips up to a Fry's in Silicon Valley in the mid to late 80s to buy components to build PC clones. It was a side hustle for me and a couple of others. We'd load up with motherboards, cases, power supplies, keyboards, hard drives, floppy drives, and monitors, and then assemble PC clones for sale. We didn't make much on each one, of course, but it all added up. If we watched for sales, we could boost the profitability a little, but we could always beat retail prices for our customers.

[utopian]

16. Me too, but for my own use

I couldn't afford a brand new computer back in the day, but I could afford to buy the components from Frys and build one myself, which I did several times.

I also loved their selection of music and videos.

Sad that they'll be gone, but to be honest, I haven't thought about shopping there in years.

[cstanleytech]

10. Never shopped their but I heard about 25+ years ago that they were among the best at the time.

I think their main fault was not adapting with the times in building an online presence soon and or fast enough like Newegg and Amazon.
Had they done that we might not be seeing them going under.

[andym]

13. Trump's China tariffs really hurt Fry's

In a way Trump put the final nail in their coffin because in recent years until 2019 or so Fry's was very dependent on deals with Chinese distributors of electronics-- alot of their merchandise was of this nature.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/10/frys-tries-to-quell-rumors-of-its-demise-as-customers-worry-about-empty-shelves/

[onetexan]

41. Agree. Tariffs was one of the factors

Frys was one of my tech savvy kids'favorite places when they were younger. My son esp'ly loved the electronic hardware & i got modems, accessories & things like batteries there. I didnt like the refurbished things too much but what they had was decently priced. Its a shame its come to this but over the years i've also seen the decline in the service quality & store conditions, a reflection of the gradual cutbacks. Ecommerce has also doomed them. I'm hoping they w retain at elast an online presence. Anybody know if thats the case?

[andym]

44. Fry's bought Outpost.com to enhance their web presence in 2001 after the dot.com bust

Cyberian Outpost was one of the first online e-retailors. It IPO'd in 1998 for over a billion dollars. Fry's bought it for 21 million in 2001-- a smart acquisition. Btw, 2001 was when Newegg was founded as well, so Fry's was in a great position to compete and succeed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberian_Outpost

So it was very surprising that Fry's online presence didn't work for them as they had reasonable underpinnings.

However, it did seem that Fry's did not develop the Outpost site much over what it initially acquired (except to use it for Fry's) and perhaps that and their distribution model never advanced.

[CloudWatcher]

14. I'll blame Amazon.

People's addiction to Amazon has killed a lot of retail. I've never lived within driving distance of a Fry's, but regret their passing. I'd often make a trip to one on my trips to California.

[jmowreader]

18. The only reason I shop Amazon...

...is when I need something and the only way to get it at a brick-and-mortar store is to drive to Seattle or fly to New York.

[cstanleytech]

22. Amazon certainly played a part but Fry's slow response to shifting from physical stores

hurt them far more.

[gay texan]

15. No more door nazis

Damn, I really loved that place

[MissB]

27. Ha yes.

That exactly.

[iluvtennis]

17. Can't count the number of hours I spent in Fry's in the 90's and early 2000s when I lived in the

SF Bay Area. It was a fantastic resource and I will miss it.

[SeattleVet]

19. I'm surprised it took this long.

The last few times I was in our local Fry's (about 2-3 years ago) it was already in pretty sad shape. They had a lot of empty shelves, very few of the things I used to buy there (mostly electronic components), had already blocked off large sections of the store, and the sales staff was non-existant until after I had done all of the comparisons and selected an item. I needed a new router and WiFi access point for the house. When I had finally selected one a salesperson showed up and pretty much forced me to take it back to the back of the store so he could 'enter it'. 'Entering it' consisted of him putting it into their computer system showing that he had made the sale, when in actuality all he had one was chase me down the aisle after I had the item in my basket so he could get the commission or whatever credit Fry's was doing.

By that time they were already trying to rely on the As-Seen-On-TV garbage and bins full of super cheap and crappy gadgets. Most of the computers on display were either crashed or locked up in some weird loop; monitors were totally misadjusted; printers were missing parts needed to function to demonstrate them; the software selection was small, and mostly very outdated; and the overall general tone of the place was, 'We actually went out of business a while ago, but just haven't fully realized it yet.'

[Politicub]

24. Loved Fry's at its peak 20 years or so ago.

And spent a lot of time browsing at all sorts of random things that other stores didn’t carry. It has been on a slow but steady downhill slide for years now. The last time I was in one — Maybe four years ago? — a good many of the shelves were bare.

The bay area stores were the best. One had a wild west theme and another was patterned after a crashed UFO site.

[BuddhaGirl]

39. Loved the themed stores!

The location I shopped at in Orange County had a Roman ruins type decor, if I remember correctly. I would spend hours in that store...good times!

[marble falls]

25. Always felt I got treated fairly there. What a shame.

[bobalew]

34. THAT'S BECAUSE THE CUSTOMERS ALWAYS HELPED EACH OTHER, NOT THE STORE STAFF..

THE SALES STAFF DIDN'T KNOW SQUAT, IN THE SILICON VALLEY STORES...

[NurseJackie]

26. If MicroCenter closes... my husband (and my sons) will grieve deeply.

It's one of their favorite places to shop for goodies and gadgets and the newest tech. When my old (Windows Vista) computer died, they found a replacement for me at MicroCenter.

I think they're regional and not national, so I don't know who their competitors are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Center https://www.microcenter.com/

[Initech]

29. I was just at mine today, business was booming there.

There were lines out the door, though I mostly suspect that people were waiting to buy current gen graphics cards. I don't think there's anything to worry about there!

[pstokely]

38. they're giving away thumb drives and SD cards if you sign up on the list

probably a loss leader to get people in the stores

[bobalew]

33. last I dealt with MicroCenter was in the early 90's when I was working for a singaporean company

AZTECH Labs, where I successfully demonstrated the very FIRST Microsoft implementation of "Plug & Play", in their Minneapolis headquarters. I have no idea what their difficulty was, but It installed without a hitch, and we made the sale. They are on-line & brick & mortar, so far....

[onetexan]

42. This is like when the Tandy stores closed up years ago

[NurseJackie]

43. The Mister now orders his little gizmos, switches and boxes from Amazon...

... so he's still able to find them. It's just not the "instant gratification" of having it at that very moment. And the tactile "thinking process" of figuring out what size will work with a particular project. --- He misses Radio shack too.

[zipplewrath]

28. A bit like Sears

They should have been situated to excel during the online retailing. Instead, they fought it.

[orleans]

30. i remember trying to buy something at one of their stores

i wanted to pay cash
they wanted all kinds of info anyway--address, email, drivers license
i said here's 20 bucks--i'm paying cash
we need this info anyway
nope. go to hell.

wtf?

i never went back. if they pulled that shit on everybody i'm surprised they didn't go under long ago

[paulkienitz]

31. Fry's used to be awe-inspiring.

Lately I've had to buy a bunch of capacitors and other jellybean parts, and only Digikey could do the job -- even Mouser wasn't cutting it. (Amazon was hopeless.) Used to be I could buy this stuff locally.

[hunter]

35. I built my children's high school computers using parts from Frys.

It was a really fun place to visit then, the stores were well stocked with all sorts of electronic components.

I'd always come home with more than I'd intended to buy.

These days the only computers I find interesting are my old Atari 800s and the Raspberry Pi.

I do most of my work and web browsing on Chromebooks.

My current "desktop" machine is about 8 X 8 X 1.5 inches and runs Linux. That machine was a corporate throw-away which was missing a hard drive. I added a solid state drive and memory I bought online.

In the old days I would have upgraded such a machine using parts I bought at Frys but the last time I went there, which was before the pandemic, the shelves were sadly bare and they didn't have some of the components I was looking for in stock.

[FlyingPiggy]

36. Oh no! I would shop there more if there was one by me.

Sad to see them go...

[Mawspam2]

37. My only surprise is that it took this long.

I've been to the Sunnyvale, San Jose, Fremont, Sacramento, and Austin stores. It was a great place in the early years.

But then, when they started stocking cheeply made imported crap, and when people began returning defective merchandise, Frys policy changed to repackaging the items and putting them back on shelves for the next sucker to deal with, only to have it returned and put back on the shelf again.

I wouldn't buy anything that had been previously opened as it was a sure sign it was broken. Half the stuff on the shelf had been previously opened. Then Frys bought their own shrink wrap machine to fool people into thinking the stuff was new when it was broken. After that, I quit them forever.

[Sapient Donkey]

40. As a kid I remember going to the Fry's in the bay area with the Egyptian theme

I thought it was the coolest place. Later a young adult I worked at one in Oregon. I was actually disappointed even back then, because it wasn't like the one I remembered as a kid. It was still a cool place. I recently went to one of them in North Texas and it was totally bare. I had to go to a best buy to find what I wanted. I was hoping that it was just that store, but I guess not.