Once the local go-to playground for cool electronics toys, Fry's Electronics finally puts an end to its customers' misery

 

Yesterday I discovered some bad news: that Fry’s Electronics had shut its doors everywhere on Wednesday, including its Renton location. It was once the go-to one-stop place for electronics, computers, peripherals, software, games and videos, as well as selling useful knickknacks and curiosities on the side. It had been in business for 36 years, when personal computers became a little less expensive and more practical. For a while I did most of my computer-related shopping there, and video purchases after Tower Records closed its doors in 2006.  But after I quit my airport job, so went my free bus fare, and then I only went to Fry’s when I actually needed to, mainly for peripherals and to look at the latest laptop models and processors.

But trouble was on the way, no thanks to Donald Trump. The last time I was at Fry’s was 2 years ago to buy a new laptop, and the place looked a lot emptier than usual, not just of customers but of product. I expressed interest in three models on display, but none of them were in stock for sale, and I ended up purchasing a model from a brand I didn’t trust and within a year that distrust was born out. In doing research on the demise of Fry’s, in 2019 there was a lot of online chatter about stock issues. Aisles that used to be stuffed with every item related to electronics you could possibly imagine that you might want were suddenly bereft of product.

Yes, online retailers like Amazon were taking their toll, but you could no longer depend on Fry’s to have what you were looking for. Particularly for PCs, many people prefer to make their purchases in-store instead of trusting Amazon to ship a computer without damaging it in transit. But when Fry’s didn’t even have the display model in stock at the store, you had to look at alternatives, like Best Buy, which is where I purchased an 11^th Gen. Intel laptop after waiting two years for the company to get its act together with its 10nm process.

No doubt the demise of retailers like Fry’s came about by more than one cause, and Amazon stealing business was just one of them. Trump’s 10 to 25 percent tariffs on computer parts made in China beginning in 2018 caused price hikes and supply chain issues, causing delays in stock of finished product. But even after some of these tariffs were eased later in 2019, issues created by the tariffs were only exacerbated by the pandemic. 

While Trump's "America First" trade policies had the opposite effect intended, Fry’s survived 2020 using the federal Payment Protection Program, but when funding ran out, the writing was on the wall; one person I talked to accused Fry’s of essentially swindling the government to stay in business while winding down its operation, laying off workers and selling off remaining inventory, until it released the following statement on its website on February 24:

After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry’s Electronics, Inc 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.

It is sad end to a place that used to be a virtual playground of cool product to ogle at and wish you had enough money left to buy.  Where there had once been long lines at checkout aisles with a dozen counters serving one customer after another at all hours of the day, it had become a place that you couldn’t trust to have what you were looking for. Best Buy is the only store left around here that sells computer-related product in sufficient models and quantities in-store these days, particularly if you suspect Amazon employees of mishandling and misshipping “big-ticket” items.