The Fry’s Era
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That said, I am not sure we can put the blame only on Amazon. I was in Microcenter the day after, and it was stupid busy - took 30 minutes to check out and was packed to gills. They crammed all of the good stuff of Frys into a much smaller space - mostly focused around PC electronics.
I think what changed is the speed of shipping. Retail only adds value if there's a more convenient local warehouse, or you trust the salesman.
Compare that with an experience searching for CA glue accelerant (a pretty standard item I had seen at Fry's before) had me driving to three separate stores, finding nothing, and locating a model shop nearby just before close, a several hour ordeal.
It is not hard to compete with Amazon. Having reliable stock I can go out and grab today has huge value. I don't want to delay my project by a few days (or because weekends, a whole week) waiting for Amazon shipping and having to spend the additional effort trying to make sure I don't buy cheap knockoffs (or wondering if what I got was a cheap knockoff)
I think Fry's in the bay area are suffering from high labor and real estate costs.
In the end the cost for the person to pick up and deliver an item on demand like that goes somewhere and that in particular is something that doesn't scale away. The margin improvement from having a warehouse instead of a box store won't make up for that last mile delivery charge, especially when the box store can do the same kind of delivery and benefit from impulse or high margin items from in person shoppers.
Amazon is like wading through sewage to find what you want, and rarely if ever do you find something you weren't already explicitly looking for.
https://images.frys.com/art/deals/tralfaz/Free_Local_Deliver...
Once B&M stores offer same day delivery its going to be hard to be an online store.
They're always changing though: they had a console video game section for a while, now thats hobby computers (rasbery pi and co). They had a camera section, but thats gone. Computer books, gone. So they seem to be paying attention and a few years back they finaly went to a one line checkout (still takes too long, but its better).
This wildly depends (for that store, at least)--if you need something very mainstream you'll find it but they don't have a lot of things that I'd consider pretty obvious for a tech store. Their computer cases, for example, are mostly X-TREME in nature and they have few-if-any HTPC cases at any given time, and definitely nothing that can rack.
On the other hand, what I do really like about them is that they sometimes, for high-demand items, don't actually update the online stock numbers. I was able to walk into the store to pick up some RAM and walk out with a 3900X because they were saving them for in-store customers.
Cases that aren't designed to appeal to 12 year old boys are hard to come by, period. Manufacturers have decided that everything needs to have sexy angry facades and RGB lights - this has a lot more to do with product people at the manufacturers and less to do with the actual market. Ditto motherboards, especially.
It would be nice to not have to wait for Amazon to get something for a project, is all.
The Micro Center also used to have this awesome display of old logos (such as the rainbow Apple logo, Compaq, Packard-Bell, old Microsoft logo, etc) from various hardware and software companies that wrapped around the front and sides of the building in all its 90s glory. Sadly, I found it missing as of earlier this year. I wish I took a picture of it while it was still up. Did the Cambridge store have a similar "logo ribbon"?
Just going there takes me back to the proper “computer stores” that ceased to exist after the 90s. Actual PC parts and not full of appliances and movies/music
frankly a boring looking store
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3574429,-71.1149978,3a,75y,1...
Given how long they have been in the bay area they should already be owning most of their real estate.
When I moved here I was really surprised that I couldn’t find a store with the selection and prices of Micro Center in SV of all places.
I don't really understand how Microcenter does it, but they often have equal or better prices than Amazon, and in any case, they'll price-match. Also, there's no worry about whatever I buy turning out to be counterfeit.
The one slightly odd thing about the Microcenter experience is how all of the salespeople have little stickers to take credit for when they help a customer find something. Are they on commission? Is this Microcenter's way of identifying the most useful floor staff? They're never pushy about it, but it does stand out in stark contrast to pretty much every other retail shop I can think of.
The stock was better than Microcrocenter or Central Computers (when they were relevant), and their sandwiches weren’t held bad. But the floor staff and that stupid thing where they have people at the exits pretend to check receipts on the purchase side. On the return side it was just awful. Today in age their return policies are just bad. On some items they have restocking fees.
I find central computers is often staffed with people that are less than personable.
Anecdotally speaking, I had a high rate of those items not working and had to return them myself. So while all the parts were typically there and the devices powered on, the product often times didn't work. I finally concluded that they likely didn't differentiate returns that were caused by the customer changing their mind vs. customers claiming the stuff didn't work... or that the only check they made for "not working" product was a simple power on type test; given the quality of staff and costs of doing any thing more probably made it difficult to do better (maybe they didn't have good vendor return terms, good vendor allowances, etc. ... who knows) Again, my experience, but I felt like I was playing for slot machine odds when I bought those products... your mileage may have varied.
I stopped shopping there years ago because the quality of the experience and that I didn't trust the open box product and wasn't sure I could reliably get unopened product... the trip to the store just wasn't worth the aggravation. I think that must have been before the restock fees as I don't recall ever having that issue myself (those the returns process was not exactly fun). I did like the store theming, particularly in the Southern CA stores (which is where I shopped them the most).
full price
More than once there has been a line of a half dozen people at the pink sharpie exit, and I've just walked on by, much to the amazement of the people waiting in line.
Note: I'm talking about Fry's, not Costco. I'm told Costco is different because it's a membership club and you have to agree to their terms and conditions to shop there. (I'm also told that even Costco can't demand to see your receipt, but they can cancel your membership if you don't show it.)
How does Costco figure out which membership to cancel? Surely they don't detain you if you refuse to show your receipt.
Current nearby Frys plays dirty. Has a severely physically disabled guy checking receipts.
Yea. Total guilt trip for not letting him mark receipt.
they hired unknowledgeable floor staff
The receipt-check theft-deterrence theater is annoying. I never wait for it.
Today in age their return policies are just bad.
I was in Fry's recently and they seemed to do the same thing. After asking for some help they asked me to print a "quote," which meant printing out a receipt at a kiosk on the sales floor with their name. They pulled it up when I checked out. I kind of understood what they were doing, but the process seemed a bit awkward--especially when my question was more along the lines of, "Do you have more stock in the back? When you do you think you'll have more?"
I happened upon another isle with 100m cables, by the ethernet cables, but a bit of searching saw they were not there.
Lets check out the computer area, I see tonnes of options, search through them all, can't find it. break down and ask a guy, after much confusion he hauls be back to the raspi section. i told him I've already looked there.
I walk back and see the tv/video section, of course, lots of high-end cables but no extender cable. Ask a guy, do you even have these? He shrugs, asked me if I looked through the computer section, I said yes, and I already looked in components. He started arguing with me that they didn't have ANY HDMI-anything there. "Why would you think they were there?!?!"
Finally as I'm walking away, I spot some random sub-section of the tv isle. And around 8 cables there, I look over, there's one that's 5m long, weighs what seems to be 10lbs and cost $30. And I got my 10k steps in.
I asked when I walked in and they said "yes, look in aisle Foo". No luck, so I asked there. "Oh, you should check aisle Bar".
Nothing there either, but the person in that aisle helpfully directed me to aisle Fizz. No luck there, but the person said "you might try aisle Buzz."
And there was yet one more aisle after that.
Yes, they had five different aisles with various selections of USB cables, many of them overlapping but a few different ones in each location.
In the end, I had no luck finding what I needed - and I'd really hoped to get it on the spot to use for a project that evening.
So I walked out a bit disappointed and spent two minutes on Amazon, ordered the exact cable I needed, and had it the next day.
But the exercise of walking around the store was worth it!
I cannot recall a single time that I was able to find what I was looking for on the Fry's website--including many times I was able to walk into the store and find an item sitting on the shelf. That was even 10-15 years ago and it never improved.
There are a whole lot of reasons that Fry's is on its death-bed; their clear lack of commitment to a strong web presence to drive instant-gratification shopping is an important lesson for other brick-and-mortar retailers.
I used Fry's exclusively for building custom PCs since returning a failed motherboard and/or components was a drive away instead of days away with Newegg/Amazon. They had much better selection than Best Buy. Best Buy survived by adjusting to users habits, that is browsing in-store then buying on Amazon. Best Buy site isn't great but useable.
Some quirks of shopping at Fry's that I remember:
* The sales associates always insisting on printing me out a fairly meaningless "quote" that matched the sticker on the shelf, and having me present it at the register. I'm not sure if their sales commissions were tied to printing out quotes, or if it was intended to prevent pricing mistakes, but any interaction with a sales person always resulted in a quote.
* Watching people at the returns counter navigate through their completely arcane computer system (a text-based "green screen" in the age of the iPhone) with surprising grace.
* Perhaps the least atmospheric cafe ever built, placed smack dab in the middle of the store with no windows to the outside world or natural lighting. I don't think I ever saw anybody eating there.
* The loud background music that would play... some kind of (classical?) solo piano music that didn't fit either the Western theme or the general feel of the store. Between the lighting and the music I always left the store with a headache
Despite some of the negatives above, I always really enjoyed shopping at Fry's and would try to buy things there whenever I had the chance. What eventually ruined Fry's for me though was just the lack of inventory. I would want to buy something and Newegg or Amazon would have it in stock, but Fry's wouldn't. A couple times their website would even list an item as being in stock, and I would brave the 101 traffic to drive down to Palo Alto only to find it was actually sold out. I also eventually switched to using mostly Apple products, which offer fewer choices, are harder to tinker with, and are priced pretty consistently across all retail outlets (with the exception of Microcenter who used to run some pretty decent in-store-only sales on MacBooks before their Santa Clara store closed down).
On a visit back to my native Southern California last Winter, I ended trying to rekindle old memories by taking a trip with my dad and neighbor to our local Fry's. Sadly, we all had a collective shock experiencing the lack of cars in the parking lot, sales associates on the floor, and the large empty spaces on once full shelves. The place seemed like a shell of its former self. After not being able to find whatever I was looking for at the time, I later made the trek down to Micro Center, which I recall not only had my item in stock, had shelves full of product, a store full of employees, and a parking lot full of cars. It definitely fit my bill of being able to drive to a brick and mortar store, to quickly pickup a part and getting straight to using it, especially when one cannot afford to wait days for shipped product.
When I used to shop at Fry's, if I knew the product I wanted I made it a game to avoid getting a time-wasting "quote". I would avoid making eye contact with any salesperson, grab the product I wanted, and make a mad dash out of that aisle.
Of course even if you got a "quote" you could crumple it up and just go to the register with your product. It would be the same price to you either way.
One time I picked out a $20 camera case without any help from a salesperson - I didn't need a discussion of the features of each case, I had my camera with me and just wanted to try them out to see which one I liked that fit the camera!
When I started to walk away with my choice, the salesperson flagged me down and insisted that I needed a quote. And then they wrapped it around the case and taped it down on all sides!
At that point I didn't have the heart to tear the quote off the case and deny them their fifty cent commission.
CompUSA (a big, hypermart-style tech and electronics retailer) came in and killed Egghead (the shops were just too small to compete) and most other mom & pop's; I was there at the closing firesale. And later Comp USA also succumbed. Fry's was more of a pseudo-flea-market with cheezy looking price signs, and full-page ads in the San Jose Mercury News... their big draw was the Black Friday deals where people line up like people line up at Walmart.
Nowadays: NewEgg, PriceWatch.com, FindChips, OctoPart, Halted (HSC), AliExpress, eBay, Amazon
If you want to save some money, bargains can also be had traveling to a certain building or two in Shenzhen / Huaqiangbei; and it helps to have a friend who speaks fluent Mandarin. See also:
- https://youtu.be/sZs4NDC4yrI
- https://youtu.be/tUXIzJpjEuU
PS: The Fry's pictured in the story is the Campbell location where it was fun to run up/down the flat "escalator" as it was like an airport's people-mover, but much bouncier.
The Fry's in the picture is the one on Brokaw Road in San Jose, not Campbell. It's Inca themed. The Campbell store is Egyptian themed.
Weird Stuff, I miss you.
My Fry's was the Palo Alto store, the truck painted with the Fry's logo parked at that parking lot on El Camino Real showing when to go.
It almost got them interested in electronics. Alas, not quite.
My bullshit detector immediately went off :) How could Ohm (1789–1854) write letters to Einstein (1879–1955)?
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/search?q=micro+center&...
It's a decent place to shop at if you need something quickly.
At least it's only 3 hours to Micro Center.
Fry’s was indispensable because out of the ten to twenty parts that went into your machine, one would invariably be a dud. If you ordered on Newegg you’d have to wait for returns, wait for delivery, etc. At least this particular system-builder turned to Fry’s because turnaround was so quick with a physical storefront.
But now we'd rent instances instead of buying on-prem hardware only to get rid of when the company either dies (and no longer needs it) or lives (and outgrows it). Which makes two ways Amazon outran Fry's.
I'd never seen anything like the selection of stuff. We bought several 256-bit memory modules and a six pack of soda. It carried the biggest and only selection of electronics components and equipment/supplies for assembly/testing I'd ever seen. It also had candy and sodas. That was about it.
A few years later I visited again and couldn't believe: (a) how big it had become; and (b) how many finished products it was selling.
The second store to open was in Fremont (though not at the Fremont store's current location), and the third was the Palo Alto (at the current location).
Source: I worked some summer jobs at the Lakeside Dr. store in the late '80s.
Even better, there was Fry's and WeirdStuff on the west side of Lawrence, and nearby on the east side was a Computer Literacy Bookstore and a Togo's. Many a Saturday of mine was spent visiting that Fry's and WeirdStuff, then crossing Lawrence to pick up some books and magazines at Computer Literacy, then reading the magazines while enjoying a large hot #7 at Togo's.
1. Arguing with an employee over signal loss over different types of antenna connectors after I had just installed and analyzed my umpteenth outdoor network. He insisted I was full of shit.
2. Seeing (who I believe to be) Linus Torvalds in a BMW. I had a minor fan moment, girlfriend was like "who's that".
3. Being treated like a potential thief every single time.
4. My two year old having a melt down in one of the isles because dad had been geeking out for too long and it was way past nap/snack time.
One very Silicon Valley story he related was a guy correcting a sales guy (or shopper?) with the words "No! I know because I designed it!"
We asked for about something and the sales assistance gave useful information -- to which my manager quietly added after he left "He won't be here next week ... he will have found a better job". The job market was really good.
I've been going to Fry's since the early 80s, when they were a supermarket that had started carrying computer stuff. It was a place to take out-of-town visitors, especially for the first couple of themed Fry's.
It's never been a really great place to actually buy stuff; you had to be careful that what you chose from the shelf wasn't returned and repackaged, for one thing. For a while you couldn't buy a laptop from them and take immediately delivery, they had to "test" new machines, and I remember telling them that I would let them know if a serial port was bad, and to get their mitts off of my hardware.
They no longer check receipts at the door in Renton. This truly is the end times.
The last time I visited the Sunnyvale Fry's they had a big mattress section.
That is definitely what I am looking for when I shop at Fry's!
Part of it is several types of media used to take a bunch of shelf space but is now sold digitally. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s there were two whole isles of PC games, plus isles for consoles. Now in the world of Steam, there is half of one side of an isle. It is a similar story with PC software, music, and video.
It's the only Fry's near Seattle, so it will be sad if it goes away.
But most that I got from the local store workers is "huh, I'm not sure, let me check the manual" and "well, this says it has got these specs, and that one got those specs, and the price is different, so that's the difference". Thanks, helpful workers, I can read too, I was looking for something that isn't in the label directly in front of my face. Looks like you're not paid enough to care.
There are only three things that brick-and-mortar retailers can compete with Amazon and other online shops now - being able to physically touch the merchandize before buying, being able to get it immediately and being able to talk to a human that can answer questions and provide advice. Unfortunately, it looks like the majority of retailers still do not realize this, especially the last one. Maybe they just don't have the money to hire somebody who would know and care - but in this case there's no reason to prolong their suffering by shopping there, just let them die and release the real estate for more productive uses. I, however, while being an extreme introvert, would still would like to have some stores where I can talk to a knowledgeable human. And yes, I'd pay a reasonable money for it, if only there would be somebody who wants to earn it.
Does anyone want them?
Tip: use dvdisaster when recording to fill up the empty space on the iso file for error-correction later, and time and date-stamp the disc so you know when to reburn it.
When I was working at a startup in the early 90's, we decided we needed to max out memory for a demo to a big potential customer. They sent me to Fry's in Palo Alto to get the module.
After the demo -- boss decided it was too expensive and I needed to return it. Slightly horrified (although I think the module was a couple thousand 1994 dollars and we were... bootstrapped) I went back.
"What's wrong with the product?" "Um... wrong color?"
And they did the refund.
The consequences of this, together with the rise of remote work will most probably affect the process of urbanization itself to the extent that it will even have a 'revolution' name of its own, like the preceding 'agricultural', ' industrial', 'internet' etc.
I figured I'd check Fry's since they've started advertising "Local same-day delivery for $3" when the best Amazon can do for a lot of stuff is $13 for two-day delivery. Plus, I honestly hate dealing with Amazon and their six-times-a-week solicitation for "Prime Student" considering I graduated 15+ years ago. This would not be a hard sale for them to win. They sell the right type of goods, tyhey have the infrastructure to deliver it to me as fast as the competition, and the listed prices weren't wildly out of line with online dealers.
They didn't have the router I wanted. Hell, expanding the search to a generic "AC1200 router" revealed well more than half of the items as "out of stock for pickup/local delivery; we'll mail it to you in a week.". A few had "same-day delivery for $70" (maybe this is some weird surge pricing from the firm they contracy same-day delivery to?) It wasn't even obviously a bait-and-switch play (where the $50 units are out of stock so you'll buy the $150 ones)-- both cheap and expensive gear had hugely erratic stocking.
It almost felt like they were trying to pivot from a retail place where the web storefront was a way to reserve or order local-delivery of retail stocked goods, towards a conventional mail-order house. Seeing the 200 "order now for dispatch Monday" buttons doesn't look weird on Newegg because it's not being contrasted with big red "Not available for pickup at City, ST", but here it looks sad.
I made a "traffic light" for our cruise control (powered by the parallel port) that sat in my cube when I wasn't in the office (I worked from home 3 weeks out of the month) that stayed in that cube until I left CollabNet in 2010...
I'll never forget that first feeling that I was in my own little heaven when I stepped into that Fry's, and even after being to a few Fry's near me -- Atlanta and Indianapolis -- and seeing them in their current state, it's a little bit sad.
It makes me wish that they could still be as relevant today as they were when I first saw them, but, I understand that retail changes.
It made the experience significantly less enjoyable. For me, personally I can't say that amazon replaced frys-- after all I was already purchasing many of the things I'd go to frys for via newegg for many years before. Fry's was a go to for things I didn't care to wait for shipping, for oddities found browsing, and things low enough in value to not be worth shipping.
I'm typing this on a computer I purchased at that store, in fact. But with experiences like the comcast sales people I would have said that it would have likely been the last even before hearing that the store would be closing.
But I still miss Weird Stuff, and I was just a bit too far out of the loop to get there before they closed.
Bought my last laptop at MicroCenter in Detroit. It's the best there is in Michigan, but sorry it doesn't even compare to Fry's.
I do miss Computer Literacy bookstore and it's demise is definitely accountable to Amazon. BeOS was pretty damned cool but Jean-Louis do you ever wonder what would have happened if you'd ever taken his offer and created Fry's of France?
They're already carrying some books and magazines. The only reason I can think of them not doing it is because the margins would be lower.
I was at Oxnard Fry's yesterday and their magazine selection was at best 20-25% of the shelf. And there were only two network switches in that whole section... :(
And the farm theme sucks. I liked the Alice and Wonderland theme at the Woodland Hills one I used to shop at before the Oxnard one opened.
Micro center was insanely over price when I went a few times in St. Louis in June. Like $70 keyboard for $147. Razor chroma ($140 elsewhere) for $240. I basically cut my prices in half on several trips just price matching.
I felt the same nostalgia when Radio Shack started folding up, but then I went to one of the stores and realized they'd become a hollow shell of their former greatness - just hawking cell phones. Just as Radio Shack couldn't compete with Amazon, neither can Fry's.
We're going to have the same nostalgia about Best Buy when that shoe drops. I was in a Best Buy recently when I forgot my headphones on a trip, and I was dumbfounded at how bad the gear was. It's less about good gear now, and more about Beats headphones and gold-plated cables. The writing's on the wall.
I think the parent comment about headphones isn’t a BestBuy problem — its a universal headphone problem.
Stocking something high-end and good is a losers bet. People who know what "good" is are going to get it online.
You want to stock the cheap stuff that moves, and the gold-plated stuff that suckers buy.
This is the sad reality of retail in the age of online.
Bare shelves are incredibly bad for customers to see. So why is there no retooling, downsizing, ditching the huge warehouse-size storefronts, focusing on service, etc.
Frankly Amazon is so much better than Frys in so many ways.
Amazon is on my never buy spinning drives list until I have evidence that they will pack them appropriately and not just toss the manufacturer's box inside a much larger box with maybe two air pillows so the drive can slosh around.
I think the instigator was this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgzDiMp4uY0