Fry's Electronics is gone 2/24/2021

[aedipuss]

"Fry's Electronics suddenly closed all of its stores overnight, ending a nearly four-decade run in business."

probably not a big surprise to most people...

[lordsmurf]

Saw this last night.
It was a matter of when, not if.
I remember a thread here at VH about stockless stores for at least 1-2 years now.

[Barrythecrab]

In a somewhat related way I think I can add a parts supplier (not far from me), SMC smcelectronics.com, announced they are selling off final stocks (thousands) of belts because the last 2 manufacturers they dealt with finally closed their doors, MAT and MCM. Does anybody else make these little belts? We're all gonna need some eventually.

[solarfox]

McMaster-Carr sells a lot of small rubber belts in various sizes and shapes, and so does Stock Drive Products/Sterling Instruments. Looks like there's some other outlets, like Ken's Electronics, which have belts for a variety of stereo and video equipment, too.

And yeah, unfortunately, the death of Fry's isn't much of a surprise to anyone who's been to any of their stores in the last couple of years. People are already blaming Covid and Amazon for killing them off, but honestly, Fry's shot themselves in the foot numerous times well before the Chinese Death Virus came along. The implosion was already visibly under way in 2018-2019, when they were already blaming the visible gaps in the shelf space on "supplier problems"; 2020 just accelerated the inevitable.

(The "supplier problem" was primarily that they tried to shift to a "consignment" model, and bypass the distributors by getting the manufacturers to send them products on consignment instead. The idea was that instead of paying wholesale to the distributors and tying up cash in products that might or might not sell, the manufacturers would only get paid if and when the products actually got sold. Not surprisingly, the majority of their suppliers didn't think much of that idea and informed Fry's that they were disinclined to acquiesce to their request...)