Originally published at: Fry's Electronics closes stores nationwide | Boing Boing
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Too often this means that employees that are still owed wages just don’t end up getting paid. Hope that isn’t the case here.
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The real estate vultures are already circling.
(This is also the site of the American Institute of Mathematics, which John Fry founded and has been hosting for 25 years. This has been an important venue for international mathematical research projects, I wonder what will become of it.)
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¯_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe the scam artist that bought Radio Shack’s name to sell ugly vintage-looking t-shirts can also buy Frys!
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I was cleaning up over the weekend and found a Frys gift card that was probably never used. Darn! But that’s the least of it. I lament their closing for a number of reasons that I’ve probably mentioned here before, like the memories of our first flat screen TV purchase was from Frys, our Arlo system, networking gear including lots of patch cables, plenty of storage media. Sigh.
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That’s a shame. As discussed in the earlier Fry’s topic, the chain was already in decline due to poor management (esp. non-existent staff training) and competition from Amazon. The pandemic put the last nail in the coffin.
There were lots of empty shelves when I last visited the one in the SF Valley last March, which was the writing on the wall. Still, I have good memories of taking my nephew there to shop for components for his first gaming PC that we built together, as well as of lot of good “finds” I made in previous years. RIP, Fry’s.
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Not surprised. I’ve never seen a store seemingly so want to go out of business. We moved to Sacramento 5 years ago and had a Fry’s about a mile away. Great! I loved their deals but it was too far to drive before. But my experience couldn’t have been more… not just bad, just nothing. I signed up for their daily and weekly online deals. Never, ever worked. The store was decently stocked but was like going back in time to the 1980s in how it was set up and the whole feel of the place. It took forever to check out. I really wanted to give them business but at a certain point it became clear they just didn’t care.
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I bought a fair bit of stuff from their Downers Grove, IL store, and was flabbergasted when I walked into it late in 2019 and found it looking like a bomb had gone off. The place looked just downright eerie. I don’t know how Fry’s made it this far. It seems like in its final years, before they went completely to a consignment model, that the deals weren’t as good as they had been.
So that’s two of my Big Three* brick-and-mortar computer shops down, with TigerDirect being the other one and Micro Center the last standing. Losing TigerDirect hurt the most, since it was by far the most convenient of the bunch for me.
* not counting Best Buy, which isn’t the place I’d go for building a PC, but is a place I’d consider for headphones, a TV set, or a cell phone.
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Wait, it isn’t in that castle?
Interesting magazine selection under “Sports & Recreation.”
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When i visited CA friends in college back in 19xx, they’d take me to Fry’s like it was Disneyland. That no one I know is bemoaning its closure speaks volumes about how the market has changed.
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Such a shame.
I have built two computers from the ground up thanks to Fry’s massive inventory, as well as the helpful techs who got me everything I needed. At no time did I have to return an incorrect part, or go back to get that “one more thing” that should’ve been part of the order.
Those days are gone forever, sadly.
Now all there is for a computer build is throw myself at the mercy of a hodgepodge of online folks who are about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
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It seems sad that they didn’t have a big liquidation sale. I suppose these days inventory can be sold in bulk more efficiently. End of an era indeed.
I will never forget going to the Palo Alto store to find shelves of clearly opened/returned/damaged items being sold as new. The best part was having absolutely zero guilt about returning something if it didn’t work out.
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That was never built (I assume you mean the Alhambra replica)
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I probably was at that same one - the only Fry’s I ever was in was in the SF valley, specifically in Sunnyvale. I was in the area for work, and having heard about the place for years, I had to check it out.
More than anything, it reminded me of a Circuit City, just before they went out of business. A quarter of the place was empty shelves. There were some interesting items, but most of it was just…stuff. I was a little disappointed. I’d hoped to wander into some wonderland.
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The last one I went to was the Canoga Park “Alice in Wonderland” location. I suspect by March of 2020 all of their stores had that same empty-shelf look.
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Even though I hadn’t been inside a Fry’s for years, this still makes me sad. Fry’s made up a disproportionately large percentage of my discretionary spending from the moment I landed in Silicon Valley in the early 90s.
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Well, “& Recreation”, so…
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Part of that is, in its final year and a half or so of operation, they went to a consignment sales model, so they didn’t actually own that inventory and they’re supposed to ship it back.
The consignment model works if you’re Walmart, but good luck if you aren’t.
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