Ailing Fry’s Electronics is no more: Chain goes out of business after thirty-six years

Tech mega­s­tore chain Fry’s Elec­tron­ics is clos­ing down for good.

The eclec­tic brick and mor­tar retail­er, which was able to remain a going con­cern for years after the demise of com­peti­tors like Cir­cuit City and Com­pUSA, has itself reached the end of the line after thir­ty-six years in busi­ness.

“Fry’s has made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to shut down its oper­a­tions and close its busi­ness per­ma­nent­ly as a result of changes in the retail indus­try and the chal­lenges posed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” the firm said in a state­ment, which can be seen at frys.com. (Fry’s online store has been tak­en down; the excerpt­ed state­ment is now the extent of the com­pa­ny’s online presence.)

“The Com­pa­ny will imple­ment the shut down through an order­ly wind down process that it believes will be in the best inter­ests of the Com­pa­ny, its cred­i­tors, and oth­er stake­hold­ers. The Com­pa­ny ceased reg­u­lar oper­a­tions and began the wind-down process on Feb­ru­ary 24th, 2021.”

“It is hoped that under­tak­ing the wind-down through this order­ly process will reduce costs, avoid addi­tion­al lia­bil­i­ties, min­i­mize the impact on our cus­tomers, ven­dors, land­lords and asso­ciates, and max­i­mize the val­ue of the Company’s assets for its cred­i­tors and oth­er stakeholders.”

Most of Fry’s thir­ty-four stores were locat­ed in Cal­i­for­nia or Texas, but it also had stores in Ren­ton, Wash­ing­ton, Wilsonville, Ore­gon, Las Vegas, Neva­da, Down­ers Grove, Illi­nois, Fish­ers, Indi­ana, Phoenix and Tempe in Ari­zona, and Duluth and Mil­ton in Geor­gia. Unusu­al­ly for a large chain, Fry’s stores were themed.

In its hey­day, Fry’s Elec­tron­ics stores were the place for technophiles on the West Coast to find pret­ty much any­thing need­ed to build a com­put­er or cre­ate a home net­work­ing set­up. Fry’s stocked tens of thou­sands of items. It sold tele­vi­sions, house­hold appli­ances, movies, music on com­pact disc and vinyl, and an array of gad­gets and periph­er­als in addi­tion to com­put­er parts.

One of my favorite ever Fry’s pur­chas­es was a Metro-Vac elec­tric duster, which I still have and use to keep my com­put­ers in top work­ing order.

Metro-Vac’s dusters are more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly than cans of throw­away air, and they’re made right here in the Unit­ed States. Metro-Vac has a prod­uct repair depart­ment, so if your duster hap­pens to need a new pow­er cord at some point, as mine did, you can ship it in for a new part rather than send it to a landfill.

I’m not sure I would have known about Metro-Vac’s prod­ucts if I had­n’t seen them for sale on a shelf at Fry’s. Fry’s was real­ly use­ful for prod­uct discovery.

Anoth­er mem­o­rable pur­chase was the Belkin Blue­tooth USB adapter I got at Fry’s in the ear­ly 2000s. Blue­tooth mod­ules were not as ubiq­ui­tous in lap­tops then as they are today, and I was try­ing to add Blue­tooth con­nec­tiv­i­ty to a Dell lap­top that did­n’t have Blue­tooth built-in. I ulti­mate­ly found an adapter that worked well at Fry’s, made by Belkin. My first stop had been Best Buy, but their selec­tion was unsat­is­fy­ing and I was unable to get the adapter made by their house brand to work. I still have that Belkin Blue­tooth adapter, too.

NPI’s first dig­i­tal pro­jec­tor, a bright View­Son­ic unit with DLP tech­nol­o­gy, was also a Fry’s pur­chase. Our team still has that pro­jec­tor — it too remains in good work­ing order, in part thanks to the Metro-Vac elec­tric duster.

Though the excerpt­ed state­ment above blames the pan­dem­ic for Fry’s busi­ness dif­fi­cul­ties, the chain was in awful shape before the term COVID-19 had even entered the lex­i­con. Back in 2019, videos began cir­cu­lat­ing of emp­ty shelves at Fry’s loca­tions in dif­fer­ent places, from Phoenix to Ren­ton to San Jose.

Unlike Best Buy, Fry’s nev­er real­ly made a seri­ous push into ecom­merce. Its online store was clunky and dat­ed. Its prod­uct selec­tion, once one of its com­pet­i­tive advan­tages, failed to rival that of Ama­zon’s, or Neweg­g’s, or cam­era mega­s­tores like B&H Pho­to and Ado­ra­ma that did invest in cre­at­ing a seri­ous online presence.

Fry’s also neglect­ed to cre­ate a com­pelling in-store expe­ri­ence to com­pen­sate, as evi­denced by the fir­m’s fail­ure to upgrade its point of sale terminals.

You can see in this Retail Archae­ol­o­gy video that even in 2019, store com­put­ers were still run­ning Win­dows XP, which Microsoft end­ed sup­port for in 2014.

Hav­ing failed to piv­ot to ecom­merce prop­er­ly after the U.S. econ­o­my began com­ing out of the Great Reces­sion, Fry’s began a down­ward spi­ral it could­n’t recov­er from, which cul­mi­nat­ed in this week’s exit from the marketplace.

In addi­tion to not hav­ing a strat­e­gy for adapt­ing to the preva­lence of online shop­ping, the com­pa­ny also lacked sound inter­nal con­trols to pro­tect itself.

One exec­u­tive (Fry’s Fer­rari-dri­ving vice pres­i­dent of mer­chan­dis­ing and oper­a­tions) embez­zled $65 mil­lion before get­ting caught in 2008.

Fry’s cash crunch forced it to take increas­ing­ly des­per­ate mea­sures, result­ing in its stores becom­ing unap­peal­ing ghost towns. The Verge’s Sean Hol­lis­ter reports:

It turned out the com­pa­ny had been forced to switch to a con­sign­ment mod­el, only able to attract sup­pli­ers will­ing to get paid for their goods after Fry’s man­aged to sell them. Many sup­pli­ers weren’t. A for­mer employ­ee tells The Verge that Sam­sung stopped doing busi­ness due to unpaid bills, and that Fry’s had elim­i­nat­ed most full-time roles even before the pan­dem­ic hit, in order to save mon­ey. A long-time store man­ag­er tells me employ­ees got paid out (includ­ing vaca­tion pay) through Feb­ru­ary 24th.

Geek­Wire also ran a piece about Fry’s prob­lems in late 2019.

Some­how, the chain limped and stum­bled along until this month, when it became appar­ent that Fry’s was done and could no longer remain a going concern.

The com­pa­ny said in its state­ment it is “in the process of reach­ing out to its cus­tomers with repairs and con­sign­ment ven­dors to help them under­stand what this will mean for them and the pro­posed next steps.”

If you had turned over a device you own to Fry’s for repairs, Fry’s advises:

• For cus­tomers who have equip­ment cur­rent­ly being repaired, please email customerservice@frys.com, to arrange for return of your equipment.
• For cus­tomers with items need­ing repair under a Per­for­mance Ser­vice Con­tract, please call (800) 811‑1745.
• For con­sign­ment ven­dors need­ing to pick up their con­sign­ment inven­to­ry at Fry’s loca­tions, please email omnichannel@frys.com.

Please under­stand if we are a bit slow to respond giv­en the large vol­ume of ques­tions. The Com­pa­ny appre­ci­ates your patience and sup­port through this process.

Good­bye, Fry’s, and thanks for all the tech.