When I used to live in San Jose, I would go to Fry's occasionally.
Now I get almost all of my electronics online.
I get emails from Fry's on a regular basis.
I wonder if their online store is out of business as well.
I doubt it. The whole business is shutting down. They may carry on though if someone buys them out and keep the online part going like what happened with Radio Shack. But then again, such stiff competition would probably make it a moot point. I don’t know how Radio Shack is still going even online.
Never heard of Fry’s but here in Canada the Radio Shacks filed for bankruptcy some time ago and were revived as The Source. Bell Canada is the sole owner and is using the storefront for promoting their Internet packages/cable TV/cell coverage. There are still some limited stores in my town, deserted with very few customers.
As CNCman pointed out, electronic part suppliers are on the web. Other novelties and general electronic devices are sold thru the mega-chain Best Buy.
Brick & mortar electronic stores that operated in my town either changed vocation, or have a special market as RC drones, or supplier of Energy Storage Solutions for solar/wind. There are but 2 independent stores for the general items (consumables) and some cheap trinkets. They do offer special orders which suit me (some items don’t ‘ePacket’ ship from China - but somehow commercial accounts pass-thru).
No use being sad if everybody keep buying direct from China many more to go the same way.
Everybody keeps doing there little part in destroying their own counties retail little by little. But we all keep doing it.
later
Odd, as I don’t even recall a Fry’s in NYC, not even a small Fry.
Rat Shack slit its own throat, first when they told ’lectronix geeks to f off, that they wanted to become a me-too cellphone store, then later when they were the only major chain-store to not offer rainchecks, ship-to-store let alone ship-to-customer, price-matching, anything most of us take for granted.
And they seemed genuinely puzzled and clueless as to why their business was irreversibly dying, despite a retarded name-change, like that’d fix anything. Lipstick on a pig…
Hollywood, CA/Burbank airport, 2+ years back.
Chris
Aw man, I used to shop in store in California quite often and after I moved to where there were no stores I still mailordered from them.
I bought my first Inova XO3, with the fancy TIROS optic, about >15 yrs ago when they were first released from Fry’s in Palo Alto.
Bought some stuff a couple of months back and still get their weekly email flyers, got one just this Monday! and not a thing was mentioned about closing.
Sad.
I used to shop at the Fountain Valley store when I lived in CA. Looks like typical cash flow problems. This is what happens when you don’t pay your vendors, or drag them out way past the due date. They tire and quit selling to you. No product, no sales, no profit. Word gets around, it escalates, and goes downhill quickly. Even if they were struggling, California’s covid lockdown measures, was probably the final nail.
Official statement
as kuoh posted…
“…the stores had become ghost towns
with very few shoppers and even fewer sales people
to help when you are looking for something they should have.
If anything, the surprise is in how long they have tried to hang on.”
this could be said about a lot of retail right now.
Fry’s was a fun place to go, I remember rounding up friends once in a while and taking a trip to ours, about an hour away. We’d spend hours there, looking at stuff we couldn’t buy, eating at the cafe, sometimes we’d splurge on something. It was also a place to go if you had a hardware failure and needed a replacement ASAP.
But for the most part, building a new PC, or upgrading, it makes so much more sense to just order online and have it delivered to your door cheaper. You don’t have to worry about stock levels, deal with salespeople.
I bought a wireless keyboard there once, and I’d picked it out and was just making my way to the checkout when a salesman stopped me and asked if anyone had helped me. I told him no, I knew what I wanted. He said, “come over here, we have a special on that, just take this to the register”, and he printed out a slip with his name on it, but nothing about a discount/savings. He just wanted to score a commission on something he had nothing to do with.
The Walmart of tech (stuff) for years… I’d go there to buy parts for PC’s, etc. But internet sources got more REAL on pricing and when Fry’s lost that “lost leader” edge (on a few key new items they’d sell cheap), there was no need to waste time looking at overpriced tech from last year (when one could indeed buy it for 1/2 on the net). If they just sold toilet paper, diet coke and pampers… they’d still be around 
Radio Shack was a victim of poor management, failing to capitalize on market trends and changes in consumer habits (e.g. 5he Internet, ecommerce), and drifting into vertical markets that required more investment and diversification than they were prepared for. Plus they didn’t mange their core inventory well either. 2 bankruptcies abs 4 CEOs later its curtains.
I spent some happy hours in the Fountain Valley Frey’s 20 years ago. The selection and prices were great. They had all kinds of great gadgets I didn’t know I needed until I saw them, I would actually leave my credit cards at home and take cash for what I needed. I didn’t see the decline as I was out of the country. It is sad for Freys but it also makes me sad for all we’ve lost with our changing way of life due to technology and now the pandemic. I feel we are poorer for it.
Wellp, when was the last time anyone went to a brick’n’mortar store? Ever actually need a salesdrone? You’d think it was strictly self-service.
Oh, you might get assailed by 3 separate drones asking about your cellphone plan and wanting you to switch, but want help with tweezer-polish and you’re SOL.
Im surprised they lasted as long as they did. Last time I was there was for a PC fan I needed and they had 1-only 1 in stock. I could hop on Amazon and they had 10 different brands and varieties to choose from, shipped to my door in 2 days. However, when you need it right now, it’s good to have a place you can go to other than a specialty store that may not have it, and charge you double if they did. Sadly, that convenience is gone.
I remember my first visit to Radio Shack in 1999, somewhere north of Miami, probably Ft. Lauderdale. My dad needed some rare component to fix his ham radio. Since that specific component was nowhere to get in Germany in 1999 we used the opportunity to order it during our vacation in Florida. Radio Shack managed to get this cheap part from Japan within a couple of days and back home my dad fixed his ham radio and was happy again. :-) I was totally fascinated what they had for sale in their store.
Later, in 2004 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama I visited a Radio Shack store in some shopping mall again. My former fascination was more or less gone, only finding cellular phones and notebooks for sale that were also offered at Walmart.
I remember the days when CompUSA, CircuitCity were still around, and Fry’s was the reigning king of PC and electronics retail. It was packed with everything you could want for your PC and stuff that was hard to find anywhere else locally. My decade old PC has half of its parts from Fry’s.
I lived quite close to one, so I’ve seen the decline over the years. Even 3 years ago, the shelves were starting to look bare. It was a ghost town the last time I visited it in 2019. The writing was on the wall for a long time.
Was at Microcenter just last week to buy parts to build a new PC. I did need a sales guy to unlock the higher priced parts from their cages. If only I could find a new GPU in stock and at MSRP!
KuoH
End of an era… Fry’s was a great store chain once upon a time - far superior to radio shack - and most stores were three to four times the square-footage of a giant food market… everything from resistors, capacitors to solder supplies, oscilloscopes and DMMs - as well as motherboards and computers… When I lived in California - it was THE place… Great memories…
In the last several years however, they no longer stocked anything on-line that I wanted to buy… imo, they became cheap and ordinary in their stocked goods as diy circuit prototyping fell out of favor… so Digi-Key and Mouser took their place for me…
The notice of the closure was in this morning’s paper. They opened the one store in Las Vegas perhaps 7 years ago just a few miles away from my home. Storefront theme was a slot machine. How did I miss that? I last visited the store about 2 years ago looking for a desktop computer. I didn’t find anything I liked so ended up at Best Buy. When it came to components I bought most of them directly from China on eBay. Much easier and cheaper to buy online and up until Postmaster NoJoy got hold of the USPS delivery times for Chinese parcels were cheap and fast.
There certainly was no warning. The article had the story of a guy who spent $1,300 on a computer he was to pick up yesterday. They even tried to sell him the store-backed warranty and this was one day before the store shut down. He had driven from Arizona only to find the store shuttered.