Fry's Electronic Store Closures Confirmed

[SpikeSpiegel]

After seeing BitWit's video about his local Fry's store having inventory issues.  I just confirmed that my Fry's Electronics store closed it's doors on 12/29/2019.

 

And here's the photo from the main entrance way.  Of the official notice from Fry's Electronics

[Evanair]

Having worked there for a few years a decade ago, I can say without a doubt it was their business practices and stocking nothing but garbage quality, high GP merchandise that killed them.

 

People didn't trust their sales guys because they chased quotas and commission rather than what the customer really needed.  

 

I'm personally happy they closed. While it does strike a blow at consumers able to shop locally and see products, most of their merchandise was overpriced garbage. Being part of the hiring process for 3 departments, It was the goal of management to hire salesman with no knowledge and "train" later (aka never) on products.  The difference between a SATA drive and an IDE drive, between DDR2 and 3 and whatever speed it needed to be was never about what was compatible or useful, but about how much commission was on each sale.

 

Good riddance to a horrible business model. 

[SpikeSpiegel]

1 minute ago, Evanair said:

Having worked there for a few years a decade ago, I can say without a doubt it was their business practices and stocking nothing but garbage quality, high GP merchandise that killed them.

 

People didn't trust their sales guys because they chased quotas and commission rather than what the customer really needed.  

 

I'm personally happy they closed. While it does strike a blow at consumers able to shop locally and see products, most of their merchandise was overpriced garbage. Being part of the hiring process for 3 departments, It was the goal of management to hire salesman with no knowledge and "train" later (aka never) on products.  The difference between a SATA drive and an IDE drive, between DDR2 and 3 and whatever speed it needed to be was never about what was compatible or useful, but about how much commission was on each sale.

 

Good riddance to a horrible business model. 

I never went there until today.   I had worst customer service at BrandsMart.  I ask for a Panasonic Microwave and they took me to the HDTV's and the guy said we do sell Panasonic HDTVs.  Then I rolled my eyes and left without saying a word.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I wonder how long until the San Diego location on Stonecrest Blvd (near I-15 & Aero Dr / Murphy Canyon Rd) closes?

 

Idk if they still do this (they were pretty low on stock last time I was there a few months ago), but a few years ago - well, look at the GPU display from March 2016 ...

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did get a few good deals at Fry's though, like an i7-6700K for $259 in Nov 2016, and two 5TB HGST Deskstar NAS HDDs for $100 each when they were going for $200 (2015 or 2016, I forget which now, the drives are dated Jun 2015)

 

Hey maybe we could finally get a Micro Center location in San Diego?

[SpikeSpiegel]

19 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I wonder how long until the San Diego location on Stonecrest closes?

 

Idk if they still do this (they were pretty low on stock last time I was there a few months ago), but a few years ago - well, look at the GPU display from March 2016 ...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did get a few good deals at Fry's though, like an i7-6700K for $259 in Nov 2016, and two 5TB HGST Deskstar NAS HDDs for $100 each when they were going for $200 (2015 or 2016, I forget which now, the drives are dated Jun 2015)

 

Hey maybe we could finally get a Micro Center location in San Diego?

We got Best Buy's. Costco, Sam's Club, Wal-Mart's, Office Depot's, Staples, and a Micro-Center.

 

However we lost a TigerDirect, Brandsmart, HHGREGG, BJ Wholesale Club, and course Fry's Electronics.

 

As long the Micro-Center is still booming in our area will be fine for a few years.  I love Micro-Center and I wish that Fry's Electronics didn't close it's door.  I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

[Mooshi]

My Fry's is a grocery store

[AlexOak]

55 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

I did get a few good deals at Fry's though, like an i7-6700K for $259 in Nov 2016, and two 5TB HGST Deskstar NAS HDDs for $100 each when they were going for $200 (2015 or 2016, I forget which now, the drives are dated Jun 2015)

 

Hey maybe we could finally get a Micro Center location in San Diego?

 According to a twitter message. They are looking for good locations to build more stores. 

 

Do a survey on how many people would be interested in a microcenter. This could "help" them decide if its worth building and also shows if there is a market for them.

[Spotty]

58 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Idk if they still do this (they were pretty low on stock last time I was there a few months ago), but a few years ago - well, look at the GPU display from March 2016 ...

Oh wow! It actually took me a second to realise what was wrong with that picture! My brain read those as GTX1070 at first then I saw the 8400 GS.

[Bombastinator]

I alway thought “frys” was an inauspicious name for an electronics store.  Might make a decent restraunt name depending on what they sold, but not so much electronics.  Of course I also thought the same about “mattress giant” which sold mattresses and apparently it got them a lot of business so what do I know?

[atxcyclist]

Once the Fry's here closes, there will be no computer component stores left in Austin, one of the most tech-company-laden cities in the country. Fry's crushed all the local shops into nothingness years back, so now we've got nothing.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, atxcyclist said:

Once the Fry's here closes, there will be no computer component stores left in Austin, one of the most tech-company-laden cities in the country. Fry's crushed all the local shops into nothingness years back, so now we've got nothing.

Maybe microcenter will buy em out.  

[SpikeSpiegel]

3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Oh wow! It actually took me a second to realise what was wrong with that picture! My brain read those as GTX1070 at first then I saw the 8400 GS.

I see some ATI Radeon 5450's on the bottom shelf

[Bombastinator]

36 minutes ago, Mooshi said:

My Fry's is a grocery store

That makes more sense actually.  So they sell fried food?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, Mooshi said:

My Fry's is a grocery store

LOL! We have two Fry's Electronics stores in AZ (would you believe Fry's Electronics and Fry's foods were started by the same company?): one in Phoenix and one in Tempe. Both have sucked for years. Sadly, Fry's Foods (now owned by Kroeger) is also going downhill.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

LOL! We have two Fry's Electronics stores in AZ (would you believe Fry's Electronics and Fry's foods were started by the same company?): one in Phoenix and one in Tempe. Both have sucked for years. Sadly, Fry's Foods (now owned by Kroeger) is also going downhill.

But how are their fries? 

[Jumballi]

Worked there for a while, was a horrible experience, whatever positives you may have had about the company, please understand that they were long gone by the time I started there in 2017.

[atxcyclist]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

Maybe microcenter will buy em out.  

If the local Fry's gets replaced with a MicroCenter, I'll be incredibly happy.

[Tsuki]

6 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I alway thought “frys” was an inauspicious name for an electronics store.  Might make a decent restraunt name depending on what they sold, but not so much electronics.  Of course I also thought the same about “mattress giant” which sold mattresses and apparently it got them a lot of business so what do I know?

named after the owners, Randy and David Fry.

funnily enough, started out as their fathers grocery store and when they took over they changed it

[Bombastinator]

8 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

If the local Fry's gets replaced with a MicroCenter, I'll be incredibly happy.

I could see another store buying only the very most profitable of the locations.  The one in Austin sounded like it might be.

[Xplo1t]

13 hours ago, CalintzJerevinan said:

After seeing BitWit's video about his local Fry's store having inventory issues.  I just confirmed that my Fry's Electronics store closed it's doors on 12/29/2019.

 

And here's the photo from the main entrance way.  Of the official notice from Fry's Electronics

Luckily the Microcenter is 1/2 mile down the road.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Fry's has had a few individual store closings but they have not offically announced that the whole chain in going belly up...yet. One rumor has it that Fry's stocks are low because Fry's is trying to avoid the higher prices of Chinese suppliers due to Trump's delightful tariffs and is trying to find other suppliers. Assuming that is true (which I don't), I don't know where they think they will find other suppliers, though.

[aisle9]

Much as it sucks to see the Duluth location gone, it was inevitable. There's a Micro Center just up the street that, while not as large, is always fully stocked and always fully staffed. The last time I drove up to that part of town was a Saturday afternoon shortly before Christmas. The MC lot was practically full, as was the store. The Fry's lot was fairly empty, as were the shelves. I highly doubt that location had even been making enough to cover rent plus utilities. The Milton, GA, location will likely survive longer because it's kind of wedged between the two Micro Centers and has the northern OTP area to itself, which is a big tech hub for Atlanta.

 

The stated reason for Fry's empty shelves is that they're having a dispute with their suppliers, and basically want a guaranteed return policy saying that if an item doesn't sell in X amount of time, they can return it to their vendor. As you might expect, that's not something any supplier really wants to do. Walmart doesn't get that kind of deal, so why would a struggling specialty retailer? The broader issue is that Fry's wouldn't be making that demand in the first place if there weren't cash flow problems due to an inability to move stock, and when you look at their prices, there's no surprise why. They can't compete with Amazon or Newegg on price alone.

 

Neither can MC, really, but MC offers combo discounts if you buy, for example, CPU+mobo or CPU+mobo+GPU that can combine to get right to Amazon prices if you do it right. They offer those discounts because odds are that if you're already in store and you've just gotten a $30 markdown on your CPU and mobo, you're more likely to buy other components while you're there. They're sacrificing some profit up front in order to get you to add cost on the back, and it works beautifully. They also have a store card that matches Amazon's 5% off, except they offer a statement credit instead of just rewards points. Oh, and they make incredibly heavy use of MIRs to bring the costs down further. That plus sales associates who, in my experience, are more likely to try and talk you out of buying way more than you need than they are to try and talk you into buying something you're on the fence about, equals a very successful business model, even if you are spending almost exactly what Amazon would have cost, maybe a little more.

 

Fry's? Well, they just stick to their listed prices. In an Amazon Prime environment where most of the metropolitan areas served by Fry's are eligible for next-day delivery anyway, the convenience of taking it home today no longer outweighs the amount of time spent waiting for the product to arrive. Without something to make them unique or particularly worth the trip (and no, themed stores with little cafeterias don't do that), well, why drive 30 minutes out of ITP Atlanta when you can buy online, sit at home and wait for it to arrive? I am going to miss Fry's, but the tech landscape has just gotten too crowded to support two brick-and-mortar specialty retailers, and Micro Center has done more to make itself special and preserve its place in the market.

[Atmos]

Frys has been talking about this "vendor" issue as being resolved for months now, yet they get literally no more stock in ever than the tiny amount of what they have had for months.

 

Back when I went in november to the Oxnard Frys an associate told me that their vendor had been changed, and they had just gotten a new one and shipments were just starting to come in, and things would get better in a few weeks. Fast forward 3 months and nothing has changed, they have even less than when I last bothered to try going there. 

 

Sucks real hard for me because they were the only place I could reliably get about any techy thing I needed for my business or personal projects for years now that wasnt a massive drive. The only competitor to them is bestbuy now, and the one across the freeway from the frys location is absolutely shite. I've intercepted people trying to break into my car there, they rarely have what I want, and the store itself is just dirty as hell. Nah, i gotta drive freaking 2 1/2 hours now down to the damn tustin microcenter through all of f*cking LA now for tech stuff if I want it same day. For those of you who know the pain of driving the 101 to the 405 or the 101 to the 5 through to orange, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then take my word for it and dont find out.

 

Only thing that makes this at all bearable is I at least can get 1 day amazon deliveries most of the time, can't imagine what its like for people without that luxury.

 

 

Now, I do have a bit of insider information, knowing people who know people, something source integrity something, but from what I hear they are looking to close down the stores where they don't actually own the lot for, and are then shifting to a completely different sales model. Seemed that this whole vendor thing is because they are looking to compete with amazon by offering a smaller selection of items that sell at much higher volumes to consumers at slightly better prices than before. instead of just stocking about everything and marking everything up to make profit. Which would mean they basically only stock macbooks, cheap prebuilts, chromebooks with very limited return periods, and that very normie kinda stuff. instead of trying to sell to the enthusiast crowd and the sheeple at the same time, they basically just want to sell to sheeple and become bestbuy2.0

[aisle9]

8 minutes ago, Atmos said:

instead of trying to sell to the enthusiast crowd and the sheeple at the same time, they basically just want to sell to sheeple and become bestbuy2.0

If that's actually the plan, it's a terrible one. Competing with the internet plus one specialty brick-and-mortar retailer doesn't work anymore, so let's compete with the internet and Best Buy, which also puts us into direct competition with Walmart's electronics department?

 

Because let's be honest, if you just need a functional laptop or desktop as cheap as you can get it, there's no reason not to buy it from Walmart.

[Atmos]

10 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

If that's actually the plan, it's a terrible one. Competing with the internet plus one specialty brick-and-mortar retailer doesn't work anymore, so let's compete with the internet and Best Buy, which also puts us into direct competition with Walmart's electronics department?

 

Because let's be honest, if you just need a functional laptop or desktop as cheap as you can get it, there's no reason not to buy it from Walmart.

I would be tempted to say it could have worked if they made the transition fast and painless and just skated on their reputation as being the nerdy techy place to get things, I could have seen that at least working for a while and keeping them alive longer, but if they are actually doing that then the transition has destroyed any kind of standing they had. for months now its been damn near impossible to get anything there, and in the rare occasion they do actually have what you need the stores feel soulless and empty, like you shouldnt be in there, that their already closed.

 

Even if they magically get all of their "vendor issues" sorted out immediately and suddenly are all fully stocked again I dont see them recovering from this for a long, long time. They have damaged their public image far too much and their core repeat customers are too burned to come back.

 

Also i just gotta say, I had no freaking idea that like all the other frys stores are themed and actually interesting to go to, or where at least at some point. The one here in oxnard is apparently themed as "agricultural history" and they did that by making everything bland, stale, and boring. I never even knew it was themed, i just thought it was a boring office environment, because thats what it seemed like.