Every Fry's I have been to in the last decade has felt like the store was already in the process of going out of business. That said, I will miss the place. Sometimes you just need a piece of electronics today and Fry's had a much wider selection than stores like Best Buy.
Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
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Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#12I hope this is fake. Few stores remain with a good selection of maker parts. Though the shelves have been pretty bare for a couple years now.
I have tried to support them recently with a few purchases. With limited stock it has been tricky, though, which I'm sure doesn't help when competing with huge online stores.
For anyone who has never been, most (all?) stores are themed, with huge decorations, statues, and props. Somewhere I read they hired a Disney designer to come up with the themes.
Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#13I went there about 2 years ago. It was a graveyard. I just wanted a USB extension cable, and they only had one, and active extension cable that must have been languishing on the shelf for 10 years. What I don't understand is how best buy has survived and Frys (I think a much better store) did not survive.
Non-nerds went to Best Buy.
Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#14I wonder how this affects the American Institute of Mathematics (which was started with John Fry’s money).
Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#15Every Fry's I have been to in the last decade has felt like the store was already in the process of going out of business. That said, I will miss the place. Sometimes you just need a piece of electronics today and Fry's had a much wider selection than stores like Best Buy.
Heck, I would go to Fry’s just to browse and ogle all the equipment I could never afford. I genuinely miss that kind of experience.
Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#16I went to a Fry's in San Jose (jungle themed I think) on a Saturday afternoon at 3PM and there were literally 7 cars in the parking lot. I went inside and there were few people and the shelves were loosely stocked with junk from China and random crap like towel warmers.
I hope to read the management post-mortem.
Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#17I’m not surprised, but this makes me feel incredibly sad. I built my first PC using parts from there. I’m going to miss it. But once Fry’s pivoted to be a consignment store that was mostly empty and selling pallets of bottled water and perfume, it was obvious the business was about to die. Curiously, Microcenter has managed to live on and seems fairly robust. I can’t help but think Fry’s tried to sell too many differ…
The only time I've ever been into a Fry's (due to not living near one) was around 2010 in the Sacramento CA area. It was so huge that I genuinely got dizzy and had to work hard to focus to see individual items (It's a thing that happens to me when there is a lot of "input" for lack of a better term). I suspect that the cavernous real estate (and its cost) only hastened their demise.
Hey, I have the same issue. I get dizzy inside malls too
Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#18I went there about 2 years ago. It was a graveyard. I just wanted a USB extension cable, and they only had one, and active extension cable that must have been languishing on the shelf for 10 years. What I don't understand is how best buy has survived and Frys (I think a much better store) did not survive.
Best Buy created a high margin stream in repairs and warrantys, while cutting down on low volume goods and basically becoming a showroom for large brands. Companies pay them to display their wares prominently. So if you’re looking for some minor obscure dongle, the stereotype is that if you go Fry’s, you’ll buy the dongle and a bag of candy. If you go to Best Buy you’ll end up buying a TV instead.
Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#19I went there about 2 years ago. It was a graveyard. I just wanted a USB extension cable, and they only had one, and active extension cable that must have been languishing on the shelf for 10 years. What I don't understand is how best buy has survived and Frys (I think a much better store) did not survive.
There was a lot of stuff going on in the corp level that really caused a lot of the problems with supply of goods.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Former-Fry-s-executiv...
Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores
#20At the Fry's in Fountain Valley California, I remember looking among the huge list of CPU price stickers for anything ARM-related, because I'd read on Slashdot that ARM was the future.
ARM, I glumly concluded, would be decades away. Now here I am with an M1; ARM is arriving, while Fry's fades.