Fry's - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: GreggD
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 05:46:00 pm
content: From AP NewsFunky electronics chain Fry's is no more.https://apnews.com/article/frys-electronics-closing-9cf141bb1996899d5bd931109eb34f34

author: dbctronic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2021, 09:58:26 pm
content: I was waiting for it, no big shocker. Probably would have happened without mean Mr. Covid's help, too.Now, where's all the liquidated stuff going? Wallets open!

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2021, 10:56:20 pm
content: Quote from: dbctronic on February 25, 2021, 09:58:26 pmMost locations don't have much of anything left, and what is left is typically old, shop-worn junk.

author: drussell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 12:01:06 am
content: Quote from: dbctronic on February 25, 2021, 09:58:26 pmI don't think they've really had much actually in stock for years...

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 03:17:15 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on February 25, 2021, 10:56:20 pmThat's always a bad sign when a store stops filling the shelves -- the business is bad so you buy less stock and when the customers see empty shelves they leave without buying.My mom worked for 20 years at Montgomery Wards but left in the early 80's when she retired. I remember going there all the time so it was sad to see it shut down about 20 years ago. I have mixed feeling about Fry's as it was pretty much a Wal*Mart with better stuff and more knowledgeable staff, but they ran the place like Wal*Mart. You can get most anything online todays and sometimes with same day free delivery -- hard to beat that. The big guys like Amazon kill brink-and-mortar operation on cost and since they charge about the same they can't compete with Bezos et al.Brian

author: drussell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 03:35:28 pm
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on February 26, 2021, 03:17:15 pm...or in the case of Fry's, filling the empty shelves of the electronics stores with cheap perfumes and makeup.(So if you take your SO with you, they have something to look at while you're shopping??!)

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 04:22:17 pm
content: Part of the problem was that most Fry's stores were enormous. That was okay in the 1990s during Fry's heyday--the stores were jam-packed with customers on weekends and you'd wait in line twenty minutes to pay despite them having forty cash registers open. In recent years, customer traffic has fallen way off, but rather than downsizing and moving the stores to smaller locations to cut their real estate costs, they kept the large stores open and tried to fill them with other things to fill the empty space. For example, software used to occupy 3-4 full aisles in the stores. When retail sales of software moved to an on-line model, Fry's had to find something to fill those aisles. In many cases, they filled them with stuff like perfume and makeup, watches, cheap toys, and "As Seen on TV" junk like George Foreman grills. A similar thing happened when DVD movie and music CD sales evaporated. And they didn't do it intelligently. For example, one store had half of one full aisle dedicated to soldering stations, tools, and supplies. When they discontinued sales of this stuff, they replaced it with perfume. So now they had half of an aisle stocked with resistors, capacitors, and other discrete components and the other half of the same aisle stocked with perfume. Absolutely nuts.