Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

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colechristensen

I was going to make the same comment. After recently revisiting my old home in Minneapolis, I had a need for something and the local Microcenter was significantly improved in the few years I'd been gone. Hobby electronics had 4x the shelf space and everything seemed a little better packed and organized.

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.

I've been going to Microcenter in cambridge MA for years. They've got a decent selection (If you need it they'll likely have something that fits the bill) and decent prices.

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).

> I've been going to Microcenter in cambridge MA for years. They've got a decent selection (If you need it they'll likely have something that fits the bill) and decent prices.

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.

>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.

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.

Motherboards I'll give you, but Silverstone, Cooler Master, and Fractal Design all have plenty of simple and normal models. (This list brought to you by looking around my office.)

It would be nice to not have to wait for Amazon to get something for a project, is all.

I would guess that gamers are by far the largest market for home-built PCs these days. Most people see no need to build from scratch.

I completely agree with you about Micro Center frequently changing. I remember when visiting their SoCal store, the books section was moved to what appeared to be a clearance area and found a large drone display in its place. The Fry's in my area seemed like it had 2-3x the square footage, but maybe the same amount of inventory (or less) than Micro Center did.

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"?

I remember those, the one in Tustin also had pictures of industry luminaries (RMS, Bill Gates, Grace Hopper, Steve Jobs, Woz, etc) inside, posted high on the walls around the edge of the building.

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

No logo ribbon..

frankly a boring looking store

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3574429,-71.1149978,3a,75y,1...

> I think Fry's in the bay area are suffering from high labor and real estate costs.

Given how long they have been in the bay area they should already be owning most of their real estate.

Taxes and foregone opportunity are still costly, even if you own the real estate outright.

Luckily California has Prop 13 which could have capped their property taxes if they owned the property.

Once online shopping with 2 hour delivery becomes more ubiquitous it's going the be harder to be a brick and mortar store

Two hour delivery is expensive, and online stores are much harder to search and navigate than well-stocked brick&mortar (it's not impossible to do, but nobody does it).

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.

I completely agree with your point about brick and mortar stores. Having a showroom with multiple sizes and brands of product on display, and able to purchase on the spot is a great convenience over waiting for an item to ship. Yes, its a slight inconvenience to commute to and from the store, but it often beats waiting multiple days for something, and having no idea of its quality (or worse if you accidentally purchased a counterfeit product). After doing that a few times on Amazon, and having an issue with a return once, I have stuck to supporting B&M retailers, especially those like Micro Center who provide online stock numbers, indicate where a product is located in their showroom, and match prices (though I have mostly found Micro Center's prices to be the cheapest).

Frys offers same day delivery for free, with orders over $49...

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.

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