History of Egghead Software Stores

Have fond memories of Egghead in the 90s. Their focus may have been corporate sales, but they still had a large selection of computer games in the stores I frequented. Likely would have not come across some of my favorite games at the time if not for Egghead.

Ah, I remember when seeing your software on the shelf of Egghead meant you’d made it.

Of course we had to give up 50% of revenues, and then pay them tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of that for “co-marketing”, all while spending $10 a unit on packaging and disk duplication, while providing an expensive phone support team.

I guess I don’t miss it that much, come on Apple take your 30%!

I randomly remembered going to this store as a young boy and wondered what had happened to it. This led me to read the rather sad story of the company. Seems like there are some good lessons there-- for one, don't make low prices the major focus of your company unless you have some structural reasons why your costs will be lower than the competition. If they had instead focused on a higher-touch, more consultative sales approach at a higher price point, they would have been able to better withstand the competitive threat from computer superstores like CompUSA. Also, it makes you realize how little margin for error there is when you are in a low-margin, hyper competitive business. Their mistake of stocking up heavily on Windows 3.1 really hurt them.

I recall they had plenty of 2nd rate software in very expensive packaging, and a lenient return policy.

Visited this very store in Menlo Park.

Mac user at the time.

I would walk between Egghead and large bookstore, Kepler?. A bookstore, reading about cool easter eggs in Mac OS 7.1. Tried new sega games at a nearby game store.

At newegg bought a virus software for $60. It was first software ever bought. Looking back. LOL.

Huh. I had always assumed newegg.com was a re-boot of Egghead.