page_title: Fry's Electronics
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Fry's Electronics / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Fry's "Space Station" themed store near the Johnson Space Center in Webster, Texas
context_page_description: Fry's Electronics is an American big-box store and retailer of software, consumer electronics, household appliances and computer hardware. Fry's has in-store computer repair and custom computer building services. The company has a chain of superstores headquartered in Silicon Valley. Starting with one store located in Sunnyvale, California, the chain operated 34 stores in nine states by 2019, and as of June 2020 operated 31 stores.
context_section_description: In 1972, Charles Fry sold the Fry's Supermarkets chain based in California for US$14 million to Dillons. He gave a portion of the proceeds, approximately $1 million, to each of his sons, John (who had worked as the IT manager for the supermarket chain), W. Randolph (who goes by the nickname "Randy") and David, none of whom had much interest in grocery store retailing. Instead, on May 17, 1985, they joined together with a fourth partner, John's former girlfriend Kathryn Kolder, to open the first Fry's Electronics store at a 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m²) site in Sunnyvale, California. Today, Fry's Food and Drug stores are owned and operated by Kroger and are not affiliated with Fry's Electronics, although they share an almost identical logo.
  It was John's idea to use the model of grocery retailing, which the brothers were familiar with, to sell computer and electronics supplies. The original Sunnyvale store (located near the intersection of Oakmead Parkway and Lakeside Drive) stocked numerous high-tech supplies such as integrated circuits, test and measurement equipment, and computer components, as well as software and various other types of consumer electronics. The store was and still is one of the few retail outlets in the country that sold off-the-shelf microprocessors such as the Intel 80286. The store also sold T-shirts, technical books, potato chips, and magazines, including Playboy. At first, approximately half the store was stocked with groceries including fresh produce, but the groceries section quickly diminished to displays of soft drinks and snack foods. The store billed itself as "The One-Stop Shop for the Silicon Valley Professional", as one could buy both electronics and groceries (computer chips and potato chips) at the same time.
  As the business expanded, the original Sunnyvale store closed, and a newer, larger store was opened across Lawrence Expressway on Kern Avenue. The second Sunnyvale store was designed to look like the interior of a giant computer; the walls were adorned with simulated circuit components, and the floor resembled a giant printed circuit board. The exterior was painted to mimic a huge DIP integrated circuit, and the door handles imitated the ENTER and ESC keys on a computer keyboard; since 2007, this store has housed a Sports Basement store (which still bears some of the door handle keys). Fry's moved again to its current Sunnyvale location on the corner of Arques and Santa Trinita Ave, the former site of a facility of the Link Flight Simulation Division of the Singer Corporation. Each of the Sunnyvale store locations has been located within one mile (1.6 km) of the others.
  In 1996, for reasons that the Fry brothers have never publicly disclosed, they transferred all their shares of Fry's Electronics to a limited liability company called RDL, LLC, and a limited partnership called The Taw, L.P. (the latter also controls the former), and since then, they have controlled Fry's Electronics indirectly through those entities.  Their existence became publicly known in January 2012 because Randy Fry's ex-wife, Laurie Hammer, had attempted to challenge a post-nuptial settlement agreement under which she agreed to accept "units" of The Taw in settlement of her claims against Randy. On January 23, 2012, the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth District upheld the trial court's dismissal of her lawsuit in an unpublished opinion.
  Because Fry's stores are enormous, often stocking dozens of variations of a single type of product, they are popular with electronics and computer hobbyists.  One of the few stores to challenge Fry's in all dimensions (production selection and store-wide themes) was Incredible Universe, a series of Tandy (Radio Shack) superstores, which were established in 1992 and absorbed into Fry's in 1996. Historically, Circuit City and CompUSA were major competitors in the computer space, but they collapsed during the late-2000s recession, leaving Microcenter and Best Buy as Fry's main competitors. Unlike Best Buy, Fry's sells not only fully assembled computers, but all the individual
caption: Space Station themed store near the Johnson Space Center in Webster, Texas.
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