Another sad sign of the times...

Fry's Electronics announced that they have ceased operations permanently as of today (24 Feb 2021) due to the changes in the retail environment and the challenges of the COVID pandemic.

https://www.frys.com/

For those who've never been to one of their stores (in the western USA), they were like the Wal Marts of electronics stores, selling everything from electronic and computer parts, test equipment, consumer electronics, appliances etc.  Every time i visited relatives in the Phoenix or Houston areas I tried to make a pilgrimage to this electronics Mecca.  They also ran a huge mail-order business in computers and electronics.

 

41 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Another sad sign of the times...

Fry's Electronics announced that they have ceased operations permanently as of today (24 Feb 2021) due to the changes in the retail environment and the challenges of the COVID pandemic.

https://www.frys.com/

For those who've never been to one of their stores (in the western USA), they were like the Wal Marts of electronics stores, selling everything from electronic and computer parts, test equipment, consumer electronics, appliances etc.  Every time i visited relatives in the Phoenix or Houston areas I tried to make a pilgrimage to this electronics Mecca.  They also ran a huge mail-order business in computers and electronics.

 

Very sad news. I used to love walking around Fry’s and looking at all of the gadgets. They had a lot of items that no other brick and mortar store had.

Cheers, Pete

Coming from my part of the world, I am quite unfamiliar with the chain. However my only real memory of the brand was from some magazine when I was a kid with a picture of a 747SP with "FRY'S.COM" emblazoned on the side! Beautiful!

Sorry to see this. It was a long time in coming. I relied on the Orange County California store for several years from 1998 until perhaps 2005.  But the store deteriorated.  It perhaps became too busy.  It became filthy and mis-managed.  The merchandise on the shelves became more-and-more customer returns and open-box items, which most customers learned to avoid.  With all of that distressed merchandise the shelves became disorganized and both customers and employees had difficulty locating items.  The staff and customers became more-and-more frustrated, and then arrogant with each other.  I turned to Microcenter for my needs.

I moved away from Orange County.  That was now 10 years ago....

Classic example of a highly successful business growing itself too fast and into failure.  Many came before, and after.  CompUSA, Circuit City, Egghead, Crazy Eddies, etc. More will repeat the pattern.

 

Edited February 25, 20215 yr by fppilot

My Favourite Store in the world. Every visit to Los Angeles for me meant a visit to Fry's, a bigger priority to Disney or any other tourist trap or destination.

Sad to see them go but not surprised at all

I miss & don't miss Fry's...the best selection of merchandise at a decent price, I bought loads of product from them including televisions, computer parts to the washing machine. I used to refer to them as "The Big Boys Toy Store."

Darryl

Edited February 25, 20215 yr by SP2472

Reminds me a little of Radio Shack, which closed about 4000 stores in 2015 - back in the day, I used to buy replacement electron tubes for TV's and radios. 

In the UK we had Radio Shack that went some time ago. 

5 hours ago, fppilot said:

Sorry to see this. It was a long time in coming. I relied on the Orange County California store for several years from 1998 until perhaps 2005.  But the store deteriorated.  It perhaps became too busy.  It became filthy and mis-managed.  The merchandise on the shelves became more-and-more customer returns and open-box items, which most customers learned to avoid.  With all of that distressed merchandise the shelves became disorganized and both customers and employees had difficulty locating items.  The staff and customers became more-and-more frustrated, and then arrogant with each other.  I turned to Microcenter for my needs.

Same thing I experienced at the Fry’s stores in the Dallas area. 

Back in the mid 2000’s they were not too bad, a little discombobulated, and the employees didn’t seem to know much about the products they were try to sell.

As time went on, the store became weirder and weirder to shop in. They started carrying a lot of random stuff that had nothing to to with electronics. It almost became like some type of swap meet going there. If you already knew what you wanted and didn’t need to talk to anyone, you could just get what you wanted and leave.

The last time I went in, maybe around 2015 or so, it had gotten really bad. Lots of open box, returns, out of stocks and poor selection and seemly people working there who appeared that they didn’t really want to work.

I started using MicroCenter around 2009 as well and feel like they do a much better job, have reasonable prices and the employees seem to know the products.

I’m frankly not surprised that they finally folded after all these years. I’m still not sure how JCPenny and the few Sears that are left are hanging on. I’m sure they’ll be the next to go.

In the UK now it`s down to PC World mostly consumer electronics TV Fridge and a few PC parts, but I remember around 20 years ago going in and checking the flight sim shelves as they came on CD`s back then, no more console games in supper markets is all you will find.

I really miss those days on which I used to go to a electronics store and expend something like a half day looking for PC parts, components, new things, etc. Now everything is down to on-line purchases, which is comfortable and less time-consuming, but to me not comparable to the enjoyment of actually visiting the stores. Visited Fry's only once when I was in Houston years ago and it's really sorry to know they're now closed. Other stores in my area had followed the same destiny, and well before the virus came in.

Cheers, Ed

 

Over here in the UK, we had Maplin. It can be seen from the Wikipedia article linked that it went in much the same way, although helped along by a little corporate "restructuring". In fact, the shops traded at a profit but could not survive the behind the scenes debt (mis) management. I am delighted to see that the name at least is active and that there is a website.

That really is sad. I think it was a Fry's I went to in El Segundo near LAX about 10 years ago. They had all these fake Easter Island statues and tiki lamps, and it was really dark in there. A very bizarre atmosphere, but friendly in my opinion. It's sad because even if it felt dingy, it was also sort of unique. Maybe one of the few memorable electronics shopping experiences. I wonder if there's something like a worldwide Big Mac index for places that sell computers and electronics. With so many variables, maybe it's too hard to compare. I'm definitely not good at bargaining. Akihabara in Tokyo could be fun, but not that much for me. In Kaohsiung, Taiwan near the train station, there's an electronics district, where a few of the shops looked quite dingy and some of the salespeople seemed thuggish: "If you buy this right now I can get you a really good deal, so are you buying or not? If not quit wasting my time!..." Maybe good if you know exactly what you want and are really good at bargaining.

Sad, but not unexpected. Living in Silicon Valley I frequented Fry's quite often, and built my previous two flight sim computers using components purchased at Fry's. I frequented the Sunnyvale shop, which was a converted Lockheed mainframe hosting center, and it was big, spacious, and well lit. The Campbell Fry's in comparison was cramped and a bit on the dingy and dark side.

The real pisser about this is that when I was building my last computer I happened to engage with a very helpful guy, and he was really a lot of help. He recommended a refurb Corsair AIO cooler, indicating that when they are refurbed they are often better than what comes off the assembly line since their tolerances are manually inspected. Haven't had a problem (knock on wood). However, he did lament the "new class" of shoppers that frequented the store. They would suck up his time looking for recommendations and then effectively say "I will buy it online". This is the same class of shopper that killed Any Mountain, a high-end ski equipment dealer. They would go in, waste everybody's time, and then go down the street to Don's Discount to purchase the item. So, in a sense greed and selfishness help to kill Any Mountain and Fry's.

Funny story about Any Mountain. I went in there one day and the place was just buzzing, and all the dudes had big grins on their faces. Wut happened, I asked. Turns out Jennifer Montana had just left the store, and between her stunning good looks and gracious manner she hypnotized all the male employees. Just missed her!  🙂

When I lived in Oxnard I would make the trek over the hill every now and then to get to Woodland Hills Frys.  Having white box components and such was a big plus.  Now we're down to Best Buy and that's mostly phones and appliances these days.