The Beginning of the End for Fry’s
Silicon Valley institution is showing signs of going the way of the 1200-baud modem
It looks like Fry’s is going the way of Netscape, SGI and Sun Microsystems and I for one am pretty bummed.
Fry’s Electronics is every bit a part of Silicon Valley’s culture and history as the three disappeared tech companies. In fact, in many ways, it is more representative of the valley than any of the region’s famous start-ups.
The retail chain’s wacky stores are not only full of the stuff that is Silicon Valley — circuit boards, CPUs, hard drives—sold separately or as assembled products, they are also full of shoppers of the valley. Geeks, among others, who’d rather handcraft their computing machines than pull one down off the shelf.
Now, before I get too weepy, I should explain that Fry’s is not acknowledging its impending demise. That’s not new. In fact, its retro. For a time it was harder to get a comment out of Fry’s than it was to get a comment out of the CIA.
The Fry family was secretive and a touch eccentric. It was part of the store’s allure, frankly. Then for a period, the business became almost chatty, designating Manuel Valerio as a spokesperson who actually spoke.
But on the issue of what customers are calling fairly empty shelves and a kind of downbeat vibe, Fry’s is not talking.
I’ll miss the place. I can’t remember how many columns I wrote about Fry’s in my Mercury News days. They are locked behind a paywall.
I remember referring to Fry’s as Silicon Valley’s biosphere because it was stocked with everything a human needed to survive — beef jerky, pork rinds, soda, washers, dryers, TVs, games, music, books, appliances, a full range of digital gizmos and art, more or less. And yes, there were restrooms.
I remember writing about the Sunnyvale store, which served as something of a museum, complete with an Apple II under glass. And I remember meeting Desiree Low, a classically trained pianist who played everything from Mozart to customers’ favorites from their homelands.
She told me she landed the gig (playing the grand Steinway daily) after complaining about how horrible the instrument sounded when on player piano mode. I wrote at the time:
“Face it. Fry’s is more shopping than Chopin. More G4 than Kenny G. But Fry’s is also, well, odd.
Or put another way, the piano is ‘’part of our desire to make it a more interesting shopping experience,’’ says Michael Queenan, the Fry’s manager who hired Low shortly after the Sunnyvale store opened in 1998.
Of course there’s a story. Low had just earned her musical arts doctorate from Stanford when she stopped by Fry’s with her boyfriend.
He shopped and shopped and shopped and she sat in the store’s cafe. Listening. And cringing.”
I remember writing about the weekly product auditions (Tuesdays, I think) that would take place at Fry’s San Jose headquarters. Suppliers would pitch their products, hoping for coveted shelf space in the store where your best buys were always.
It seems the shelf space is less coveted today. In fact, Fry’s is apparently going to a consignment model — meaning suppliers don’t see any money until the goods they stock Fry’s with actually sell.
It’s a model, the Merc points out, that works with luxury and somewhat expensive items, but seems an odd fit for selling quickly evolving electronics.
Even though Fry’s is the sort of institution that lulls you into thinking it’s invincible and will be around forever, that’s hardly the reality in retail. I remember talking to a fellow journalist at the Merc — I’m going to say it was David Plotnikoff, who wrote the Modem Driver column back in the day — about Fry’s.
This had to be at least 10 years ago. He was saying he wondered whether Fry’s was long for this world. I asked what he was talking about. Fry’s was huge. It was always busy. It was a Silicon Valley date night, for heaven’s sake.
He said he had recently walked the aisles and couldn’t help noticing that nearly anything of consequence for sale in the store did something that something on his iPhone also did. Why would anybody buy that stuff when they could simply buy a smartphone and have it all?
That reality might finally be catching up with Fry’s. That, and of course, the growing percentage of shopping that is moving online. Fry’s was slow to offer a high-quality e-commerce experience, which causes me to wonder just what its commitment to online is.
That said, Fry’s brick-and-mortar has the advantage of being a place that shoppers want to go to. It’s an experience, from the Wild West of the Palo Alto store (soon to close), to the Mayan-themed San Jose store, to once having a piano player that would rival any musician at Nordstrom.
If we’re lucky, this eulogy is premature. Perhaps Fry’s will follow the lead of some other omnichannel sellers and scale back its physical presence while leveraging its store locations as delivery hubs.
Because, to be honest, when it comes to Silicon Valley, I really do want Fry’s with that.
