I loved Fry's in their prime, probably the early 2000s. I think what made them special was largely a product of the time. Personal Computing was booming and new products you'd never seen before were coming out every day, and this one mega store had everything. It was fun just to walk around and survey what was going on in that moment in time.

From my perspective the main things that killed it were online shopping, as the article mentions, and computing just becoming more boring, at least from a hardware perspective. Once the iPhone came out, that became many people's primary computing device or computing peripheral. Everything you needed was just an app or software which you could download online. The great mass of consumers just need a laptop and a few commodity peripherals, and they can get all that at Walmart. Then Newegg came along and really ate the PC hobbyist market.

Eventually Fry's succumbed to the GameStop effect - their primary market is completely eaten out by online competition, so they fill their retail space with cheap garbage to make ends meet. The last few times I visited my local Fry's it was more empty shelves and cheap bargain bins than anything I was interested in buying.

It was a sad end, but not surprising. I just don't think you can justify having large specialty stores anymore when online shopping is so convenient and the options are so much more plentiful.

There were just horrible in their last years. easily one of the worst places I've shopped at. Multiple locations too.

Microcenter is around now, they're not as bad but they suck. They force their cashiers to ask and demand for your personal information (phone number,address,etc..). At least online retailers won't give you dirty looks when you give them dummy info.

People are nostalgic about these places, but if they can't realize their disadvantage and at least provide decent customer experience in person, it's probably best if they went away. I wish there was a costco-like decent brick-and-mortar electronics store (costco is famous for treating it's employees well, and then having them treat customers well, as well as their wide range of high-quality items). I can order just about any piece of electronics, including things like resistors and get it within a day or two most of the times. it sure beats fighting traffic, and vying for salesperson's attention for help about an item, standing around a locked cabinet hoping someone would have the time to come and unlock it for you, so you can give them your money, standing in lines and the aforementioned cashier experience. These problems are not inherent. They are direct effects of mismanagement (except the traffic part).

I would drive hours to get to the nearest Fry's to me, to pick up some new gear. Being able to browse everything and look around was great. For me, online ordering of parts probably hurt Fry's, but the real reason was after a while, you were never sure if the video card you were buying was new, or actually a return item, and after a couple times having to drive all the way back for something that was missing parts, the whole thing just seemed way too risky. Amazon and Newegg nailed that door shut.

Fry's had an interesting warranty program that I really enjoyed and their employees would build a PC for you with the parts you purchased for free or help you put it together. This made it really nice for someone who was about to drop $2,000 on some parts and didn't trust their hands to break some pins etc.

Their warranty was transferable and they let you know about it. They would print the warranty paperwork out twice and give you a sticker you could put on the inside of the case for whoever ended up having the PC later it was still valid as it was the parts under warranty.

This meant that if you had a part that later on went out, like a motherboard, you could tell them the warranty information or show up at the store with the PC and they would figure it out. I thought this would be garbage like how Apple or Best Buy just wants you to buy a new one and try to scam you out of warranty replacement, but they actually would replace the part as needed and if that part no longer existed they would replace it with a similar one. I took a PC back there that had a motherboard under warranty that stopped working and that motherboard no longer existed, so they dutifully went and found a motherboard that had those same minimum features and substituted it without a cost.

Sacramento Fry’s off Northgate was my go-to store circa ’98. Whenever a friend wanted to build a PC, that’s where we went. The employees were great; the salespeople, not so much.

I still made the trip every holiday season until around 2017 but it had been going progressively downhill since about 2007. The expanded café, the drastic reduction in books and magazines, PC parts getting strip-mined and never restocked, audio/video media slowly disappearing; you could feel the shift.

I miss the SacBee flyer and the last-minute Christmas gift runs. Egghead Software, CompUSA, RadioShack, Borders (one of the only reliable places to find 2600), Tower Records...it was a different time.

I recently went to Micro Center. It reminded me of Fry's in the good ways. Large store, all kinds of parts and tools. They had a case of Raspberry PIs and accesories. They had a whole section 3D printers. They must have had 100 kinds of cases. A big section of storage, GPUs, RAM, etc.... It was great! I wish it was closer.

Note: I went to the one in Tustin, CA. No idea what the SV one is like or the originals in Ohio.

If you find business autopsies interesting, YouTuber Michael Girdley does pretty decent videos about them. Here's his Fry's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxPRkOdBmck

Fry’s would frequently accept returned items, and instead of returning them to the vendor to refurbish them, they would simply re-shrink wrap them and put them back on the shelf with a different colored price sticker. The item could be fine, or it could be damaged, have parts missing, etc.

A term was coined for this: “re-Fryed.” As in, “don't buy that video card! It’s been re-Fryed!”

I miss them. Spent lots of time looking at stuff and always found something neat. Plus, the store facades were fascinating: https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2021/02/so-long-frys.html

This article completely fails to mention any of the horrific interpersonal dynamics of the family members who owned Fry's which, I suspect, was the primary reason why the chain had no way to arrest its downfall.

Coming from the Midwest I visited Fry's for the first time in early 2020 weeks before COVID. I had always heard amazing things about the store, for years. It was on my short list of places to visit on the west coast. That place was not a healthy operation. Close to half the shelves were empty, the place was generally a mess and needed a deep clean, and worst of all the employees seemed entirely disinterested in helping me.

When news came that they had shut down I was entirely unsurprised.

COVID might have sped things up a little but that location at least was on its last legs.

I know it's a damn shame. Back in the day when we actually went out shopping in stores that was always one of favorite places to go, even if just to walk around and check out all the cool shit they had.

One thing I noticed at the Fry's in the Dallas-Forth Worth area, back when I lived there in the 2010's, is that it a lot of employees seemed like they were in the US on H-1B visas. Which often, not always but too often, means their employer is treating them poorly, perhaps underpaying them compared to what they would offer people with permanent residence or citizenship — because H-1B visa terms give you just one week to find a new job or leave the country if your current employer lets you go. (Or they used to in the early 2010's, at least; I haven't kept up to know if there have been changes since then. I took a job overseas in the mid-2010's, so I get a lot less first-person knowledge of what's happening in America now that I'm only there for short visits, usually at Christmastime.)

That, combined with a good friend of mine passing on rumors of the company treating their employees poorly (my friend said that he would choose to shop elsewhere rather than Fry's if he had any choice, and since the Fry's was near his house while the Microcenter was a 30-minute drive away, that meant he was giving up convenience for principle)... well, I started shopping at Microcenter too until I took this overseas job. So I wasn't too surprised to learn of Fry's demise: the writing had apparently been on the wall for years.

Re: Campbell, CA location (King Tut themed). Their PC component prices were often haphazardly high and tended to not to be the latest/greatest compared to ISVs down the street like Pixel USA. Central Computer Systems was more expensive but had/has almost everything. The funny thing is they had perpetually old and overpriced items on the components "menu" wall. And don't forget the shoddy signage and the antique POS system. Fry's Electronics was like a flea market seller got $400M, built some stores, and then hired random people from Circuit City to run it while they sipped piña coladas in absentia. I think they traded on the half-assed outlet appearance plus sensory overload like a Vegas casino to hit people with randomly high prices except for loss leaders and promos. I'll never forget that their San Jose Mercury News promo for OS/2 4.0 spelled it "WRAP" instead of "WARP" in a ridiculously giant, red font on the last page of the business section.

PS: I worked at Egghead Software until it closed (killed by Fry's and CompUSA) before starting my own IT consulting company that put me through college.

I found a flip phone in the fry’s parking lot, my dad turned it in to security, who accepted it with a smirk. I had gone through it and wrote down the phone number belonging to the phone. We called the number a week later and the guy said not only did they not have it in their lost and found, so he had to buy a new phone, but he spent hours with Verizon to make some kind of charges that hit after losing it go away. Maybe 2002 - 2003.

This was not a surprise

The surge in laptops contributed, too. The opportunity or need for expansion cards, additional memory or storage upgrades, and peripherals disappeared or shrank.

I used to think of the sales staff as the United Nations of Fry's. It was always thrilling to see someone starting their American dream, even if the service was haphazard.

I feel they failed to adapt to digital. If you look at Best Buy or Microcenter (the survivors), you can purchase in store or digitally or have it shipped and they make it quick.

It made no sense why they couldn’t provide a hybrid channel and expand their sales as opposed to forcing you to go in the store and failing to honor the online prices in-store or the in-store prices online.

Also, it’s incredible that they had embezzlement, because they seemed to have very tight internal controls when you shopped there.

I really miss it. It was a great place to shop and I drove to the entire otherside of the city to shop there. Although I’m told by people from the southwest that their northern expansion stores were much more beautiful and didn’t have a warehouse feel.

Fry's was one of the few places that used a single checkout queue for multiple checkout stations instead of each station having its own queue. Seemed like the queue was longer, but checkout time was actually less most of the time. Was a fun place to go and browse, just to see what stuff was available. Before fast shipping, was also great if you needed something for a fast fix today.

The highlight of my childhood (not to mention the basic consumer education for my eventual career in computing) was wandering the aisles of the Fry's in Campbell, CA. When that wasn't possible, I would spend hours reading the massive advertising spreads in the Sunday Mercury News, building my dream computer. Truly, my best buys... were always at Fry's! Guaranteed.

> So when they finally closed, there were some people who were sad, but there were also people who were happy to see it go.

Good lord. The nearest Radio Shack (17 miles away) closed, so to get a resistor or cap, it's "order online". That's about as environmentally sound as nuclear testing above ground (perhaps a slight hyperbole there).

But not all that far-fetched. One time, I visited my daughter's place and found a broken wire in the thermostat, so I drove to the Shack, got a cheap iron and solder and fixed it. (When there WAS a Radio Shack)

I replaced my old Nikon F2 with a refurbished FM that cost less than the repairs. Go to buy some color slide or black and white film. Same store (and lucky to have one within 50 miles). "We don't carry those"

"America Online" ... indeed.

After Fry's went out of business for a while I thought I missed them. What I really missed was the 2000-2009 era Fry's.

In that era the stores (the ones I visited at least) had surprisingly robust stock. Well into the 00s I found SCSI cables, ADB devices, and even old software from the 90s. If I needed pretty much any random component for a PC, Mac, or electronics I could probably find it at Fry's. No other stores had that sort of selection.

By the 2010s Fry's was far inferior to NewEgg and the like. Trying to shop there became a frustrating experience. Even just browsing the aisles got worse. When they went consignment only there was no reason to step foot in one. It was aisle after aisle of nothing.

As someone that helped open the Renton, Wa store, I can tell you the biggest problem with Fry's was their ethics. They treated their employees like crap, they lured people to come work for them with promises like health care after 90 days, only to fire most of them on their 89th day. I still have physical scars on my feet today from my time working there.

They would go in and buy failed brands, and use their sales floor to push known faulty products on the wager that if they sold enough of them, and they made it past that 14 day window, they won. They knew what they were doing They would force people to peddle their shit brands, masquerading as a just another product on the shelf. In short, they deserved to die in a fire and the world is better without them. If you are going to feel about about any of this, feel for the countless unnamed employees lives they used and threw away like a dirty rag after constantly guilt tripping you for not being enough.

My dad and I would journey 'over the hill' from Santa Cruz just to go to Frys in the early 90s. Computer hardware, chips to program AND chips to eat. It felt like the future. Of course you had to always make sure they didn't pawn off a refurb on your for a new price, or worse a couple times bulk memory for retail memory price, but that made it all the more of a cyberpunk bazaar. I can still see those wooden display boxes with ram stick, CPUs, etc and just a chaos mess of people trying to get parts.

The Egyptian Fry's in Campbell was my local store. Fry's was amazing - you just had to know that the salespeople were on commission and avoid them. I never had one come up to me in line and try to get a commission, but that honestly doesn't surprise me. As a nerd, I would even sometimes go and just help random people there - the salespeople sure didn't help anyone there!

I’ve been missing the local Fry’s and recently learned that MicroCenter has opened a store in Santa Clara. It felt like heaven! It was pure fun to meet all fellow enthusiasts who would swarm the demo DGX Spark to figure out if a couple of those would be better than a Blackwell. That’s my happy place now and I didn’t even spend a dime on the first visit.

Fry's was mentioned in Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs". I loved that book and thoughts Fry's was cool even before I set foot in one.

Years later I entered a store, and somehow it was already nostalgic then :)

So weird, I haven't thought Fry's for the past 20 years.

> There was something about wandering the aisles and seeing the merchandise and getting ideas

That. Exactly.

They replaced all the workers at our local Fry’s with people who knew nothing about the products, weren’t friendly, and often spoke little English. It was odd. I don’t know that it happened at all Fry’s our just ours.

But online shopping became so convenient, more and more of my purchases started going through Newegg and Amazon.

Honestly, I don't think any autopsy of Fry's Electronics can be complete without explaining why MicroCenter didn't follow Fry's in falling under. It seems that every story discussing the impeding end of Fry's had half of their comments be either "Fry's failing? How's MicroCenter doing?" or the reply "they're still doing gangbusters." And all of the easy exogenous factors that a simple analysis suggests (e.g., the rise of online retailing) should also hit MicroCenter equally well, but, well, MicroCenter isn't a failing company.

For my own speculation, I think one of the key differentiating factors is that every MicroCenter I've been to has always felt like it was slightly too small, and that probably helped insulate it from the empty store effect that seems to have hit Fry's hard.

Well, at least I got the answer to one longstanding question...the relationship between Fry's the electronics store and Fry's the Kroger-owned grocery store. They even have (or had) the same logo!

The last years of Fry's were weird. I remember the huge baskets full of strange USB gadgets, handheld fans, flashlights, batteries, and cables. Nothing nearly useful. Every Fry's store was like that.

I remember all three incarcerations of the original frys location on Lawrence. The first one was the most magical. Nothing like it apart from Akihabara (also now not like it once was).

In Portland Oregon back in 2000s we had - Incredible Universe - CompUSA - Fry’s (later on)

I’d beg my dad to drive me to them on a Friday night. Great times!

I used to love visiting their store when I lived in California. Sad to see that they no longer exist.

I learned early on not to trust anything with a sticker that claimed warranty supported by Fry's (that meant it was a return and tested No Problem Found and sold as is).

Too many return trips eats up any profit reselling parts to my clients.

But it was a blast back in the day when I could get shrinkwrap tubing, RAM modules, individual electronics components (resistors, capacitors, etc.) personal care items like combs, brushes, snacks, etc.

And then there were the books... With a cafe built into the store. I spent a lot of time and money at a number of the Silicon Valley Frys locations.

My Fry's anecdote:

AMD K6-3 333MHz CPU officially doesnt exist. No official AMD documentation ever acknowledged it despite plenty specimen documented on the net over the years. Quite weird 3.5 x 95 MHz model. Turns out there was only one source of this processor, year 2000 Fry's Electronics Black Friday deals:

Soyo SY-5EMA+ mb/cpu/ATX case $99

FIC PA2013 mb/cpu $79

AMD K6-3 333MHz cpu only $29

Weird outdated non standard CPU ordered special from AMD with weird underclocked specs just to hit super low price points.

Amazon

Now do MicroCenter.

Most of the employees of Frys were from Bangladesh. Now the connection is clear-> Ausaf Umar Siddiqui