Fry's Electronics | End of an Era

let's go over the rise and fall of fry's electronics today. this is the old store i used to work at. this is the store i first moved to texas got a job. this is the very first job i ever had when it came to a job in texas, which is kind of crazy. it's probably the first tik job i ever had and i have a lot of fond memories. but there's also some things about fries. a lot of people don't know that i actually want to kind of tell you about why it, why it failed. and it's not just hey, amazon moved in, because there's always micro center and other people that had the same business model that are still in business today. so let's go into fries a little bit. i also have some other photos i wanted to show you right now. they're just kind of taking all the all the fry's electronics carts, box them up, putting them in a truck somewhere the doors are shuttered. i can't really get anything other than this front shot. but i at least wanted to kind of take you on a journey of fry's electronics for nostalgia purposes. i have so many great memories, so many great people i met at fry's when i worked there and, yeah, it's just kind of a great spot in my life that i'd love to go over and tok about fries [Music]. now many people watching this video may not know what fry's electronics is. after all, it was just this massive big box electronics store that was mainly in california, in texas, because i actually moved to texas. this was my first job, as i said, when i came to texas, and it was an amazing place. i've never seen anything quite like it and i want to walk you through the store just so you get kind of a feel for how awesome this place was, even though this isn't necessarily pictures from its heyday, just stuff i could find around google. here was the entryway off to the right. which you can't see was the returns desk and loss prevention, kind of hidden in a closet to the right of that. you go in a little bit. you'll see the computer components section. this i have a couple shots. this was such a fun place. you could pick out a motherboard, cpu, memory, uh, this is where i spent most my my time because you'd had everything, even soldering irons and other things. it was a great place to go and i still have stuff from this section which i went and bought and past that and go a little bit further, you can see this piano and the cafe in the back side. the cafe not very many people ever went to but i worked mainly in computer sales off to the right where i sold computers as one of my first electronic sales jobs. and then finally the checkout. here there's other, a lot of other aspects: audio, video, car stereo. they did a whole bunch of different things in the store, but the checkout area was always interesting because i have so many memories there's like 50 checkout lanes. it was insane. you can see the cage off to the right. here you could pick out drinks. i remember people getting in fights because i remember one black friday though some guy picked something out of another person's cart and the person just turned around, clocked them and then they- you know- massive fight broke out and we had to call the police and or actually there was somebody on site and they got arrested and it was crazy, totally bizarre, actually pretty normal for a black friday. at fry's it was always kind of nuts and almost every friday ad day you run into stuff like that. so what made fries so great? well, i think a lot of people built their first computers there, if you were in california or texas, this was one of the very first big box stores that had like tons of motherboards, had tons of selection. it was amazing. so many great memories there. you could buy cases, anything you want and you know kind of uh, build your first custom pc. and that's why so many people have great memories of fries and i personally have a ton of great memories as this was the first job i ever had where i met people that followed me through my career. i remember my supervisor, one which was in charge of desktop pc. his name was mike mederos, huge influence on my career. i actually followed him to, you know, various businesses worked with him, probably four or five different businesses throughout my career because he was extremely skilled, not as a supervisor, he actually had a lot of server knowledge prior to getting a job at fry's and being a supervisor. i learned some of the very first servers off of him. i remember working on windows server 2000 and him showing me all the different configuration, setting up the first server for a business. later on in life, even though i was doing it and just kind of like, he was like my mentor for the most part when it came to some of my early learnings of servers. it was amazing to get that hands-on experience. and you know, heck, we went out and drank so much after that. so what went wrong? that's what a lot of people did. i even gotten comments: hey, what? what wrong with fries? um, and i'll tell you what went wrong. it had some various things. obviously amazon didn't do it any favors, but we see micro center thriving and micro center is like the- you know- successor of fries. for the most part, micro center is amazing. i still go there and still that's where i got my 5600 back there. they're one of the few people you could actually go and wait in line to go get these processors. so amazon and big box- some pivots need to happen and fry's obviously couldn't make that leap. but it goes deeper than that. there's a lot of things about fry's that i think a lot of ex-employees just never really share. so buckle up. i'm gonna try and stay as neutral as i can, but albeit, i'm probably going to be a little negative here. so you be warned. they weren't very kind to their employees and i can give a couple examples of this. this earlier shot of the piano: i remember a guy being on the piano and just getting fired for it because he wasn't- uh, he's, i guess. he took some time off, sat down and decided to play a little jingle and, uh, my supervisor didn't take too kindly to that and fired him right on the spot. there was also some crazy shenanigans with the returns, and returns and fries have always been dicey. if you went into a fries you never got an open box. it was just one of those things. the returns had very little quality control. the last experience i had at fry's was about three years ago. i bought some memory and someone actually stripped off the heat sinks and put them on the new one and swapped out i think 3200 for 2400 memory and the returns guy missed it. so that's one of those things where it's like, hey, i didn't buy open box memory but that's what they gave me. and there's so many other instances of the returns going a riot fries, i would say any motherboard that was open box, it was almost like 90. sure that motherboard probably didn't work and it was just being resold. so terrible returns policy definitely attributed to a decline in fries, but also the loss prevention right next to returns. there was some major issues with that as well, because they prosecuted everybody, like if you sold a candy bar from fries they were gonna prosecute you. that's how crazy it was and i don't know if it was just complete mismanagement. and having worked for so many retailers in my early days- i worked at blockbuster, same goody, suncoast, best buy. later on, after fry's, i went through various management loss prevention classes- i will tell you there's an amount of shrink that is just acceptable. you have so much that you just expect to write off and lose in retail. fry's i think just tried to cut too many corners here and one having just acceptable losses i think was an important thing and they just didn't give enough to this section. i think they were too cheap, uh, when it came to upper management. but also it was commission sales and it was commissioned sales gone wrong, because i remember as a computer sales guy they had these fujitsu laptops and those laptops were terrible. they were overpriced, nobody really knew the brand and they gave the biggest margin. so everybody in sales always pushed them because you could make upwards of 300 off just.

Top 5 Forgotten Electronic Stores

for the last few decades, the electronic stores landscape has undergone many changes, as today's customers turned to best buy, brandsmart, target and walmart. it wasn't long ago before they invested money in the now defunct stores such as circuit city, comp usa and hh gregg. if you are excited to ride down memory lane, we have a top pick of the most recognizable electronic stores that no longer exist. before we get started, please be sure to subscribe to our channel and tap the bell icon to get notified about our latest videos and content. number six: hi-fi buys. based out of atlanta, georgia, hi-fi buys was founded in 1973 by mel silverman. hi-fi buys may not be the most known electronic store unless you are a georgia native. in 20 years, it grew to 10 stores at its peak before being sold to tweeter inc. for 120 million dollars in 1997.. although it retained its name, all of its stores were shuttered once parent company tweeter filed for bankruptcy. the name itself was put up for auction in 2009, along with the other 12 chains tweeter had acquired in 2015 a store by the name of audio alternative, adopted the hi-fi buys nameplate and rebranded its store to the name. after 20 years in business, it is currently located in buckhead, georgia, across the street from the first showroom it opened. there is also a location that is still in operation in nashville, tennessee, which is unrelated- number five, the good guy- as it has no affiliation with the good guy dolls that brought us the child play series in chucky, but it was an electronics retailer that was founded in 1973 by ronald a unkeefer, as a television store in san francisco, california. as unkiefer didn't plan on being a major player in the electronic field, he opened a second store in 1976 once new tiknologies such as vcrs and stereo systems were introduced. as he began to see growth opportunities. by the 1980s the company had up to four stores in which it opened its first location outside the bay area, when it opened two stores in the sacramento area, targeting more of an upscale consumer base. in the 1990s the company had grown to 30 stores and began opening six new stores in los angeles, which brought them competition against many other electronic stores, notably circuit city, which had stores nearby. currently it operated stores in nevada, oregon and washington. in the late 90s, after founder ronald on kiefer resigned from the company and sales began to slow down after the emergence of new tiknologies and stores like best buy and circuit city were able to keep its store stoked with music and video. by 2003, with the company at its peak of 60 plus stores, it was acquired by comp usa, in which 13 stores were renamed and the remaining locations closed. this chain is not affiliated with the australian company of the same name, number four tweeter. based out of boston, massachusetts. tweeter was founded by two cousins, sandy and michael bloomberg, in 1972. they focused primarily on custom installation of electronics for homes and automobiles. most of its early stores were boutique stores and offered prices more expensive than its big box competitors to target customers who were more concerned with the value than price. by the 1980s, michael had left the company and the chain had up to 20 stores by the 1990s. the company wanted to expand into new markets and did so through acquisitions of brian marr stereo in 1996, atlanta-based hi-fi buys, which was mentioned earlier, in 1997, san diego's dow stereo video in 1999, just to name a few. this gave the company a presence in the southeast and midwest. in 2008, after an attempt of reviving the company in the prior year, it filed for chapter 11 reorganization, to which later switched to a chapter 7 liquidation. the company's failure was due to the poor economy and expanding too quickly by purchasing different store chains and changing the corporate culture. number three: hh gregg, founded by henry harold and fancy greg in 1955 in the north side of indianapolis. it would open a second location in 1969, followed by a third location in 1987.. in 2007, the chain was up to 77 stores. in 2009, the company opened 22 new stores, primarily in the former, recently defunct, circuit city stores around that time. at this time, hh gregg operated 125 stores in nine states. in 2010, it opened its first stores in the virginia beach area and in 2011 brought 10 stores to the south florida area. in 2012, it entered the wisconsin and louisiana areas. in 2017, without finding a buyer, the company closed all stores and later that year the brand and intellectual property was purchased by valor group for a reported four hundred thousand dollars. a brick and mortar store was opened in 2019 in franklin township, new jersey. however, the new store and website is not affiliated with the original company that went out of business. number two: circuit city, founded by samuel s wertzel in 1949 as ward's company that sold televisions and home appliances, which eventually grew to four stores by 1959. it wasn't until 1984 when it changed its name to what we know today as circuit city. in 1989, it began to sell its first line of personal computers. circuit city started rolling out the carmax retail stores and sold used cars in 1993, which was eventually spun off into its own company in 2002. in the 2000s, the company had abandoned its showroom format and went to a more self-service big box format to try to compete with best buy. appliances were also removed to make room for smaller electronics games and more computer space. in 2007, the wages for employees were dropped to cut costs and many associates were laid off in the process. they also closed a few underperforming stores in the distribution center to cut costs and improve its financial performance. in 2008, blockbuster announced a bid worth one billion dollars to purchase the chain, but withdrew its offer due to market conditions. circuit city later announced that it was closing 155 stores by the end of that year. in january 2009, the chain began liquidating its stores, which concluded in march of that year. the chain has since been revived as an online retailer in 2018 and announced plans to open a store within a store concept chain as of 2021. the company's website has an application for any specialty retailer to partner with them. before we get to the last store on the list, here are our honorable mentions. it's not a lot of money to put heads on your body. [Music]. stop by or call us at 1-800 gateway. what's up, scotty hurry? [Music]. no, let me show you something in a high-tik video system, a window document in three seconds with phoenix eclipse number one: fry's electronics. fry's was founded in silicon valley in 1985 and opened its first store in sunnydale. at the beginning, the store sold both groceries and electronics in means of being a one-stop shop for tik workers. the original location shuttered after the company expanded with its second store designed to look like the interior of a giant computer. in 1997, the chain purchased stores from its rival, incredible universe, in which six stores were acquired. during the late 2008 recession, fry's major competitors, circuit city and comp usa, both collapsed, leaving micro center and newegg as its main competitors. in 2014, fry's operated a total of 34 brick and mortar stores in the us, with the oldest store in palo alto closing in 2019.. in 2020, the company closed three locations permanently without notike, after stating that the palo alto store would be the only location. on february 23 2021, new sources claimed that all employees were given notikes that all remaining stores would close, with the company already deleting its facebook page and disabling its twitter account. the fry's website, as well as the physical stores, were shut down a day later. liquidation of the remaining assets of the company didn't begin until april 2021. well, that's all we have for our list of forgotten electronic stores. if you liked today's video, please tap the thumbs up. let me know in the comments below if you have ever shopped at any of these stores or r.

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Fry's Electronics: Will They Be Gone Soon? (NOW PERMANENTLY CLOSED) | Retail Archaeology

hello everyone and welcome to retail archeology. today we'll be taking another look at Fry's Electronics. if you're not familiar with Fry's Electronics, each of their stores carry a unique theme. in this location in Phoenix, Arizona is themed as an Aztec temple. previously we had looked at the tempe arizona location, which carries a golf theme, but honestly I think this Aztec temple theme is much more visually appealing. the reason we're looking at Fry's Electronics again is that it appears things have gotten much worse for them. in the previous video I did at the Tempe store, we had noted a lot of things like a lot of empty shelves and a lot of dust and things just not looking very well capped or stoked, and I have to tell you, at this Phoenix store it does look like things are much worse. for example, the Nintendo switch is a pretty hot thing right now and there's next to no Nintendo stuff stoked. it did enjoy seeing that Mario statue, though they they did used to have one of those at the Tempe location that I used to go to quite a bit in the past, but it seems to be gone. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it's pretty neat to see it here now. it's just weird that it's over at the Microsoft section. before we continue discussing a phrase- electronics- though- I just want to give a quick shout out to Sergio Elizondo of Sergio and the Holograms. it's actually his music that you're hearing there in the background, specifically his ukulele video game covers, but he also does a lot of really cool just like one-man band video game covers. so I'll put a link down to his YouTube channel on his webpage down in the description below. definitely check it out. back to Fry's Electronics. so if you take a look at the shot, you can see what I mean about things not being stoked. there's just lots of empty space on the shelves. this is the electronics components section and it doesn't look like they've gotten any shipments of this stuff in a very long time, and this isn't unique to this store. we notiked the same thing at the Tempe location in the previous video and I've also been getting lots of messages and emails from people saying they're seeing the same thing at their local Fry's Electronics all over the country. this was my first trip to this partikular location and I have to say this is not a good first impression. I was really surprised to see that all of their computers out on the floor are still running Windows XP and, from what I understand, a lot of their back-end systems are still dos based. now I did use to shop at the Tempe location quite a bit for PC components, so I was shocked to see this. this is their wall where they display all of their memory and CPUs that they have for sale and, as you can see, it is completely empty. this is another area that it doesn't look like they've gotten any new shipments in a very long time. I covered the history of Fry's Electronics in depth in my previous video, so I'll just kind of give a quick Reader's Digest version here. the company was founded in 1985 by John Randi and David Frye, along with a fourth partner, Katherine colder. if the Fry's name sounds familiar, it's because John Randy and David are actually the sons of Charles Frey, who is the guy that started fry supermarkets. he actually gave them the seed money to start this company. even though their logos and names are similar, the two companies are actually not related and Fry's supermarkets is now owned by Kroger. over here is the laptop area and you can see it looks pretty sparse as well. now this display might be my favorite part of the store. it's located in the back and it's a group of Aztec people, but if you look closer at it, a lot of them are holding really old tiknology. you can see a really old desktop PC, an old CRT monitor, there's motherboards, an old keyboards, turnabout and one of them's even lugging a huge CRT television. I think that stuff may have been there since the store opened. right next to that display is their home theater room, or presentation room as they call it, and it's set up like a small movie theater and I believe it's meant to show off their latest offerings as far as audio and visual stuff goes. but as you can see, there's no one in here checking it out. they just had the Deadpool blu-ray demo screen running and we also notiked a kind of funky smell in here and we also notiked that some of the seats were damaged as well. you can see it looks like part of the cushion was just ripped off here and they just put some tape over it. next to that presentation room they have a few product demo alcoves and these are very sparsely stoked as well. I thought for a minute I was looking at a Sears electronics department. in the center of the store is the cafe and, from what I understand, I think all Fry's electronic stores have this- this one's kind of a little miniature Mayan temple within the temple, and there was nobody in here. we felt really bad for the lady that was working in here. she must have been extremely bored, but we did stop off for a couple of drinks while we were filming. the operating hours for the cafe are kind of weird too. it's only open for a couple of hours a day. I guess that makes sense and you don't have a lot of customer traffic coming through. Fry's Electronics is a privately held company, so they keep their financial information private, so it's really pretty much impossible to use any of that to find out how the company is doing, but if this toy aisle is any indication, things are not going well at all. we notiked these toys from the trolls movie, and that came out in 2016, and I don't think they carry toys for a three year old movie anymore in places like Target or Walmart. there are threads on message boards from current Fry's Electronics employees, though, confirming that things are going pretty poorly. there is mention of suppliers not getting paid, stores not getting shipments for months on end, and even rumors that they are planning to actually shut down the entire company right after the Christmas shopping season. many employees have stated what they believe is happening is a slow-motion liquidation sale. it is really surprising for me to see Fry's Electronics look like this. I did a lot of shopping at the Tempe location in the late 90s and early 2000s and it was always packed and, from what I understand, when this store opened in the late 90s it was also just as busy, and that's something you've probably notiked from the footage. besides the severe lack of product on the shelves, there's a severe lack of customers in the store. this was filmed on a weekend afternoon and there were a lot of times we felt like we had the entire store to ourselves, besides just a handful of employees milling around looking like they were trying to find something to do. it must be pretty depressing to work here when there's no products to stok on the shelves and no customers to help. here's a quick shot of their backroom area and you can see even those racks are empty, which i think lends credence to the rumors that some stores aren't getting shipments of new product for months on end. even weirder are the things that seem to be very well stoked- our items you wouldn't think about going to Fry's Electronics for, like pet items and a seen on TV stuff. another well stoked area is the fragrance aisle. this is something that a lot of people mentioned on the internet and is very strange. who goes to the electronic store to purchase fragrances like oh de la dr pepper here? but seriously, though, that's always something we see in struggling retail locations- are empty drinks all over the place. these last couple of vials we've looked at were the DVD and blu-ray aisles, but that's now all been consolidated to just one aisle, and you can see this is looking a little sparse as well. it looks like there's more blu-rays than DVDs. the blu-rays are on the right and the DVDs are on the left. a lot of these were marked at full price, even though a lot of them are titles that you would find in the discount bins at Walmart. we also thought it was kind of str.

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Frys Electronics Walk-through | Tempe, Arizona 1/2/2020

welcome back. today we're gonna be visiting Fry's Electronics. it's kind of bittersweet because we just got word that they closed their longest standing store and Palo Alto, California, so we wanted to come by. we love coming here. sometimes we'll come here just on a date, just walk around and have fun. so we wanted to come through and see if it's out of business. it looks like it's not just yet, but let's go see what we have here here. we did something similar when Toys R Us went under. we didn't actually know it was going under, but well, it's not completely cleared out, but it's pretty bare. let's go take a look. yeah, yeah, I mean on that back wall. I know they've had some sort of Pro Audio. of course, Norton and AVG, that's all this. yeah, yeah, see, that's that's why Steph is there. she's awesome thinking about noise cancelling and, no, he's deadening for the studio. she's lovely. you in the market for some software- tons of it here. yeah, really sad. you can see all of the quote unquote: Pro Audio stuff is gone. pick port a very small handful of switch ds3, DS games- here looks like mostly just 3ds, Wow, Wow. now you know exactly what this is, folks. this is basically stuff that they've had in the back for 10, 15, 20 years. and as they're going through their inventory and either discarding and/or looking at what they have, they come across boxes of this stuff, and so they come out to fill the racks and make it look full and just put it out. oh, it looks like Bob is cute. have some consoles here still, some ps4 pros, a couple of switch lights, some Niagara water. bet you they're not accepting these anymore. next we have quite a few pop still. that's crazy. yeah, I don't even like using planners because I want this just cuz of the brown paper. I'm weird. yeah, she's weird. that's her face when she sees the brown paper. the weekend planner. thank you, we're happy. is this ad that? I kinda want this? the fishing star world tour. with this fishing apparatus happens a lot. they knew you were coming. they did. it needs to be like half that price, though. I'll be honest, I'm surprised that they still have the kiosks up here, sorry, well, you're good. yeah, this whole area used to be just full of music and toys. you see, the toy section is, I guess, I guess, over there. yeah, desks, accessories, yeah, this is all just stuff they they have in the back man, it's all just crap that they found back there. bring it out like: look at that, look at the inch of dust that's on it. I mean, hello, look at this one, look at this, these actually have water damage on them. look at, Wow, yeah, so they've been in the back, in a corner where the water has leaked through and they're just rusted out. yet, sad, it's sad that we're seeing this. this is a sure sign of liquidation and shutdown. it's terrible. everything you sees, you know here, old school, yeah, well, I mean like with QuickBooks and everything. write me up: yeah, Porto Santo, ps4, aslam- in the end, all that will be left. or gift cards, yeah, all this is still here because they're not discounting any of it. yet here's a 3d rudder I toked about earlier in the air. I was calling it like the Roomba. interesting. wonder how that is. [Music]. [Music]. probably that that huge rainstorm we had just leak like crazy in here. this building is falling apart. look at all the water bins. I didn't notike him till right now. man, this is depressing. look how much water than that sure did. [Music]. a couple of cheap amps and speakers, but it's all gone. [Music] - cats couple left Nissan, Mazda, Chrysler. [Music] and all the TVs are look like. looking like they're gone too. couple things left in here. like a boss to hit that for a bit. Ravin wins. [Music]. the market today. anyone interested in the TV? [Music]. oh, my goodness, look at this. cease, we feel. I feel like we have loo done it before. we have it like just before and after comparisons, yeah, [Music]. [Music]. [Music]. I mean like, look at this. they just have a whole entire aisle with just the same HDMI cable, which really isn't a bad deal. three bucks for a four foot HDMI and that's not bad. I keep saying it. I'm just it's so depressing, it's so sad to see these used to be full of you know like what a real home theater setup would be, with the TV and a projector and all the speakers on the side for you to test. they'd have really high-end stuff in here. you can see some of the price stikers still on the wall, nice, sat there from clips. it's really sad. [Music]. I know, maybe it's because, like we grew up, you know, during the, the hay day of the 90s, audio boom, home theater, big screen TVs and all that or just makes me so depressed to see this like. look at this. they're just like pulling things out of boxes like this is all the really low-end, off-brand cheep karaoke machines, all-in-one PA. this is all just garbage, just trash. like what are they even doing with it? open box now. [Music]. no credit needed. oh my goodness, staff, look at this. Wow, yeah, what's crazy is that like we are actually walking through one of the well, this'll. this will really be our last time walking through here with this, so sad. [Applause]. all right, so here's now we're gonna seal the deal. here's the proof. folks look at the warehouse: empty, totally empty. Wow, no, restoking a whole row they took out. this is where we out one more PC. actually, that's where all of the mice and keyboards were. holy moly. yeah, they're over there. okay, they must have just moved them over, okay. [Music]. I've never heard it. black might burn. I love that. mounts to the Superman. Superman. check the date. there's no date. Windows, ME, 2000, XP. so that's got to be the late 90s. yeah, it's gotta be. and when was the Superman? yeah, this is, I can, old stok. I'll be had in the back. they don't have these buttons. like hilarious. this right here used to be where the PC building station was and have a whole section of custom PC builds and people here to help you. PC components. this used to be full of motherboards right here, graphics card cases. we're back now. there's still some cases back there. saw your electronic components. [Applause]. hey, what do you have there? fun fact everyone, this is like one of the bit, something very similar. anyway, the first headsets I ever used- I don't think might even had that. it was just like you plug it in, and I used to use this for a world of warcraft way back in the day. nice seats for Internet chatting. [Music]. a few places you can go to without having to go online: stuff to build our own PC, and you can't. even a few that in online. if you ever in the market for some bottle of water, though, so I got you covered. used to have soda machines here all gone. Coke, Pepsi- they all pull them out doing the last final walk here. this is like walking on death row. [Music]. [Music]. [Music]. your change. [Music]. knowing your prize, it's been been fun. all the best here. [Music]. yeah, chatpad didn't say anything that over there. [Music]. [Music].

Frys electronics 💻📹🔥

all right, so we're gonna put a boy in here in a row, but you don't go. they shan't win that one. I'm able, and me [Music], hi, [Music]. we're going to surprise you. can I see the logo, but it can smell good living. Oh, he's holed up in huge outside to hot. hey, bro, we should walk out with a drone, whatever. let's close. YouTube. don't pay me good, deed on the fire. yeah, but YouTube don't pay me 49, don't? you don't pay me good, that's not. oh, that's the one that can fly and everything. yeah, I think that that look like a toy. you should get this, sorry, oh, yeah, this one. yeah, how much is this one? do calibrate just a moment with your average guy. you got the money for it. no, no, what you do? right there you? hey bro, we might walk out. but one of these that checks the price first? yeah, I think it is. there's a camera, all right, so we might get one. are you blogging dog's life? I mean, it is your money. who should be right? one, right, I dare you to work the hill. Oh, Norma, fall chick. oh, I think it's like batteries. oh, yeah, I think. is she nice? you're gonna get it. do you cook or you can free, you can fit your phone. oh no, they got hoverboards, brother, you okay? well, yeah, I'm making a blog record icon here to buy my hoverboard. oh yes, it's a blue team size brush. it became good enough. no more pain about life, no more. all we found beats- owners know this. yeah, this Pete- and there I think is the only one- yeah, Oh, heavy meet, still pretty heavy. a black horn and work. yeah, all right, so we're gonna put some music up in here. put this oboe charger. oh, you think I think so confused. oh, really, it got my stuff. look, it is new dealing. what the hell is that for such a pretty song? peace will soon follow this dude on snapchat. see, this is not a small thing. what follow this neck should try you snap [ __ ]. follow me right there. escape boy is champs on this going 23. skin it. you want your put your snapchat? follow him. stop skin it. James. hey, put your snapchat. what's just no check on your phone. you have any questions?

FRYS ELECTRONICS- INDIANAPOLIS INDIANA

new at five. bay area based fry's electronics recently announced its palo alto store would be closing. but is that the only one? the question of the hour, kpix 5 reporter, devin feeley, on the alarming signs that are sparking concerns about the tiknology superstore's future. it's the question that almost anyone who's been in a fry store recently has. what's up with all of the empty shelves? it's a question that has some customers concerned that the electronics chain may soon pull the plug. customers at fry's flagship bay area location say they've notiked a change over the last several months. what you're looking for on the shelves isn't there just standard stuff that you'd expect to find? it's what our cameras found inside the san jose store: fewer and fewer items in stok and more and more empty space on the shelves. it's not what you would normally expect. big dollar items are still here, but it's the little stuff that you want: the different connectors, the video cables, things like that just don't have it anymore. fry's opened its first store in the bay area in 1985 and went on to expand to nine states, where it still has 33 locations. but many brick and mortar stores have struggled in recent years as online sales have grown. it's a lot of different items that they just don't carry right now. laura thomas considers herself a fry's loyalist and says the store's woes may be part of a larger trend towards online shopping, but says if you can't find what you want at the store, you may be forced to shop somewhere else. people who shop online to get groceries nowadays- i mean people- just don't go in grocery stores no more, or even in any. you know, malls are going under. now it's like everybody wants to be online. we reached out to fry's for comment but didn't hear back. today. they have told other news organizations recently that they have no intention of closing in san jose devin philly kpix 5.. [Music]. welcome everyone to the traveling man or urbex, whichever channel. i decide to put this on since this company's probably going out of business relatively soon. um, i don't know. a lot of the news from the company says: no, we're not going out of business, we're just restructuring. but um, i've heard from a lot of people that have been into their local fry's electronics that the shelves are very bare and it looks like they're going out of business. so join me on today's episode as we check out fries electronics. this is the story of the over 35 year old fry's electronics store. charles frye started out in the 60s and 70s with a supermarket chain called fry supermarkets, based in california. in 1972 he would sell the supermarket chain for 14 million dollars. he would give around 1 million dollars of the proceeds to each of his sons, john, who had worked as an it manager for the supermarket chain, w randolph, who goes by the nickname randy, and david, none of whom had much interest in the grocery store retailing here. you can see some of the empty shelving that i was toking about, and this was about a year before the entire chain closed for good. on may 17, 1985 they would all join together, along with john's former girlfriend, catherine colder, to open the very first fry's electronics store. the very first store would be 20 000 square feet and located in sunnyvale, california. the fry's food and drug stores are currently owned by kroger. although they're not affiliated with the electronics store, they do still have similar logos. the idea of the new electronics store was to use some of the models of grocery retailing which the brothers were very familiar with. what set fries apart from other electronics stores like circuit city and best buy, was the fact that they sold electronic components such as capacitors, resistors, circuit boards. you know all that kind of stuff you would need in order to build things like computers and robots. they were even known for elaborate theming throughout some of their stores. for example, here at the indianapolis location, it was race car themed because of the indianapolis motor speedway. another staple of this store was the cafe, and i believe all the stores had one, or at least all the stores i visited had one. unfortunately, when i visited it was closed because they have very limited hours. they're only open for a short period every day and that's really unfortunate because it looked awesome. i would love to go shopping at an electronic store and grab a bite to eat and something to drink. i never got to experience this, unfortunately. oh man, will you look at this old computer? holy crap, that's a dinosaur. lgr would be proud. if you don't watch his content, you should definitely go and check it out. he does some amazing stuff, um, on old computers and old tiknology. it's really a great channel. all right, you guys? well, my first impression of this store is very sad, and not because i don't like this store, it's just really sad because i remember coming in here when um, or i remember going into the texas one for the first time going. oh my gosh, it's exactly like if amazon electronics and gadgets just boom- made a physical store. you know, like if amazon suddenly became a physical store- um, for all of their electronics and gadgets. and i loved it because you could literally get anything: robots, parts and pieces for things for building. it was ridiculous. fry's was one of the very few electronic stores billed as the one-stop shop where you could buy things such as soft drinks, snacks, microprocessors and so much more all in one store. by 2014, fries would be at the peak of their operation, operating 34 brick and mortar stores in nine us states. this would include california, texas, arizona, georgia, illinois, indiana, nevada, oregon and washington. by 2019, things weren't looking good for fries, as they would begin to close certain stores around the country. unfortunately, with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, frys would be doomed and on february 24th of 2021, their website would go offline forever, as well as the closure of all remaining stores. welcome back, well, the end of an era for electronic goods haven. fry's well, just announced that it is permanently closing the doors of its stores here in the bay area and throughout the rest of the country. nbc bay area's bob riddell is live at fry's location in san jose. this is where customers have been showing up unaware of that news, bob correct, uh, if you actually if you look over to the right, you can see some people have been showing up. there's a guy right there. looks like he was coming here to try to make a return. he won't be able to do that. one customer commented me that the writing was on the wall as far as demise of fries. if you've been in the stores in recent months, you notiked the bare shells: lack of inventory, fewer employees. you see the notike outside this location here in san jose and it is now official. after the statement was posted on the fry's website announcing that all 30 of its stores, including the four remaining here in the bay area, would close for good after- quote: difficult decisions, uh, to shut down its operations and close this business permanently as a result of the changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the covet 19 pandemic, the company will begin a wind down of its operations and the best interests of the company, its creditors and other stakeholders. several customers, as we mentioned, were unaware of the news. this morning they showed up to find a locked door, some saddened to hear to the store they shot that for years, decades in some instances- is shutting down after it's been in business for 36 years selling tvs, computers, all sorts of electronics odds and ends. uh, fry's was famous for its unusual exteriors and motifs, like the mayan theme store here in san jose. uh, here's a man who is trying to return a computer networking tool he just bought yesterday. um, i bought this yesterday and i'm trying to return it. i i didn't know there would be closing today. i guess you're stuck with it. yeah, it's unfortunate. we've been buying from them for a long time. what is the store meant fo?