When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2020, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2020, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
I go all the way back to when there was only one store, on Lawrence (near the current big brown box, but they moved twice between the original one with IC legs painted on the side and the current location). I also lived a couple blocks away for a few years in the 90s.
For me it went downhill at the time they bought Infinite Universe (or whatever that store they acquired was called) and expanded nationwide. Actually it was kind of going downhill by the time they opened a store in Campbell.
I think the Fry's unique proposition was that it sold the stuff the folks inside the industry used, but retail. I remember being amazed the very first time I entered the store (when there was only one, remember) that they sold heat shrink. All sizes. All colors. They carried products that otherwise the only way to get was to order from a distributor, which was a pain because you had to know exactly what you wanted, or trawl through paper catalogs, wait for delivery, all that. Or you could get in the car, zoom round to Fry's and pick up what you needed.
Then over the next few decades two things happened: first, in order to keep making more and more money Fry's expanded both geographically and with more product lines. This took them outside the bubble where orange 5mm heat shrink off-the-shelf is something people want, and into competition with Costco and Walmart for basic computers, fridges, etc. Second the differentiation vs old line distributors eroded as everyone bought everything online with next day delivery. If you want orange 5mm heat shrink today, Jeff can get it to a locker near you in 1/2 a day[1].
In addition, Fry's became just a painful place to shop. e.g. since the early 1990s if you tried to buy DRAM modules there, the sales person would give you hassle about being an idiot for wanting tin plated contacts vs gold. They began strip-searching customers on exit when they moved into the brown box. They stopped carrying most professional products: e.g. if you wanted the simplest thing for a data center cage such as a shelf or a 4U ATX case, they probably wouldn't have that.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/16-Heat-Shrink-Tubing-1-100FT/dp/B06Y...