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Fry's Electronics Going Out of Business?

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SimonR:

--- Quote from: Bassman59 on September 23, 2019, 04:49:05 pm ---Funny, I flew into the Phoenix, Arizona airport yesterday afternoon and got in early enough so that I could have stopped at the Fry's in Tempe before heading home (further south). I didn't really need anything so I skipped it. I wonder if that store is affected?

--- End quote ---

I was in Phoenix last week and visited a Frys for the first time ever. It was the one off the I17 and yes it was as empty as all of the others. It was such a sad thing to see, I would love to have seen it at its peak.

Amazingly it did however have the one thing I went in there for, although most of the shelves were just empty.
I also bought a Frys branded carrier bag as a souvenir, just prove in the future that it really existed.
I'm not sure one 99 cents carrier bag will keep it going

metrologist:
I've had dinner with the Fry brothers and Kathy Kolder several times. John Fry is a really nice guy as are the other brothers, Randy and Dave. Kathy retired earlier this year and some key people have left the corporate office recently. John founded the American Institute of Mathematics  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_of_Mathematics and owned the Sabercats arena football team, and bought the Flying Lady when it went bankrupt. Their store mascot, Charlie Chip, was named after their father, who helped them start the business.

Their business is private so nobody can really tell the financial health. I know they are restructuring their operations and plan to keep the business running for as long as they can, but nobody will really know what they plan to do until it happens. It will be sad if they close. You can get a 65" Samsung 4k TV for under $500 there at times.

andy2000:
Fry's in Austin looks just as empty. As quirky as they are, I'll be sad to see them go because they're still much better than Best Buy.

About 6 months ago I was in Frys and almost fell over when I saw several packs of blank Sony Beta video cassettes on the shelf.  They were cheap, so I bought them for the novelty of buying new Beta tapes from a large B&M store in 2019!  As usual for Fry's, it wasn't a smooth experience.  They rang up for about 4x the price on the shelf tag.  Fortunately, I had taken a picture of the shelf tag (when was the last time you saw Beta tapes on a store shelf).  They did honor the price, but the process was needlessly complex.  I had to fill out a bid form, and then a manager had to accept my bid.

Most Fry's stores have a theme; maybe they're converting all stores to a new ghost town theme?

Sal Ammoniac:

--- Quote from: andy2000 on September 24, 2019, 04:10:16 pm ---Fortunately, I had taken a picture of the shelf tag
--- End quote ---

Here's another anecdote from the old days... Way back before smartphones became the thing and everyone effectively carried a camera around with them all the time, Fry's had a strict "no photography" policy in their stores. Back then it was a little more obvious when someone was taking pictures in the store, and if security saw you taking photos (and there was a good chance they would because of all the surveillance cameras in the stores) they would demand you hand over the camera and they'd remove the film. I'm not sure why they did this--perhaps they thought their merchandise displays were so innovative (NOT!) competitors would try to copy them.

They're also well-known for their receipt checkers at the door who would go through your bags and compare it with the receipt. They used to be quite insistent about this practice until one overeager checker tried to physically restrain a customer who declined to have his property searched, which resulted in a lawsuit. After that, they would request to check your bags but would not insist if someone refused.

james_s:
That's bizarre, had I know about a policy like that I would have been far more inclined to sneak a covert camera in there and take a bunch of pictures just because. Can't imagine why they'd care about that.

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