Best Bye’s to Fry’s – This is Only a Test 588 – 2/25/21

2 thoughts on “Best Bye’s to Fry’s – This is Only a Test 588 – 2/25/21”

1. We actually had two Fry’s in the metro Atlanta area (with a third that was planned but never came to fruition), but unlike the ones out west, the stores were not themed other than some local history photographs on the walls. One closed a year or so ago, and as it happens, I visited the other for the first time in a few years just a couple of weeks ago. It was a shell of its former self – the front door was broken, nobody was working there, at least a third of the store was blocked off and vacant, and the shelves were almost completely empty other than some Chinese knockoff products. Frankly, if you’d told me it was already closed, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

   Their inability or unwillingness to have a competent website really hindered them – contrast that with Best Buy, which seems to have weathered the storm, and MicroCenter, which is thriving. I also heard that they were basically selling products on consignment in recent years, which greatly hindered the stock they could actually get (hence, the Chinese knockoffs rather than name brand stuff).

   I loved Fry’s at its peak and was ecstatic when they came to Atlanta, but it was sad to watch as various areas of their business (magazines, tech books, digital cameras, A/V receivers, music and movies…) fell by the wayside, leaving empty shelves or being replaced with stuff like cheap perfumes. Even as an early adopter of online shopping, there’s just no substitute for being able to go into a store and put your hands and eyes on something before you buy it, being able to have it immediately, or just wandering the aisles looking for something you didn’t know existed. I’m sad to see Fry’s go, just like Circuit City, Media Play, Borders, Tower Records, etc. before it.

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2. No episode this week?

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