Fry’s Electronics going out of business

Over the years, I’ve seen more and more completely unrelated products in their storefront from their core business, and of the components they do sell in their core business, there are too many questionable Chinese brands.

I more and more consistently feel like I’m buying from Alibaba Express when I go to that website. And it hasn’t improved much over time either.

Why is it so difficult to continually improve how you serve your core demographic for these businesses? I just don’t get it.

Sell PC parts. If you can’t compete on price with shipping (Amazon), for goodness’s sake at least make the search experience good enough that when I think “PC parts” I want to go to your website.

Anyone who ever took 5 seconds to look at Fry’s website knew, “Oh, these guys are going out of business.”

When Newegg is selling coffee machines, I have to ask myself, what moron over there thinks I think “Oh yeah! Electronics! Newegg. Well of course I’d buy my milk frother from them.”

No. I wouldn’t.

I have fond memories of them from 95-05, but this is literally a textbook case of a business that got ran into the ground by their management. They weren't able to evolve with their customers needs and would probably still be around if they weren't so awful.

In fact, I would argue they were one of the few retail companies that stood a chance against Amazon in their niche, mainly because they owned many of their properties.

The thing that killed them is they ramped up their hostility towards their customers and treated them with utter contempt. I still remember going in there a few years back to pick up a couple hard drives and the manager refused to price match their OWN website, while standing under a giant sign that said "We price match Internet retailers" or something to that effect. That was the 2nd to last time I stepped foot in a Frys and I vowed not to shop there going forward.

The very last time I stepped in Frys almost 2 years ago, I was looking for a common resistor to fix a part, since I wasn't at home and there was one around the corner. I literally couldn't find some of the most common value resistors and the store was literally bare of inventory.

It was so bad that they had shit like paper towels and water bottles stacked 1 deep across like 4 or 5 aisles. Again, this was nearly 2 years ago and I literally thought they were within days of closing back then.

I'll be honest, the only thing that surprises me is that it took this long. Sure, their format was huge stores, but the thing is they owned a lot of them, so it wasn't very expensive. MicroCenter appears to be doing quite well, so it definitely isn't specific to their retail segment.

Long story short, I will always have fond memories of doing some of my first computer builds there and salivating over their newspaper ads, but good riddance.