Fry's Electronics

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Fry's Electronics, Inc.

Type	Private
Founded	1985
Founder(s)	John Fry William Randy Fry David Fry Kathy Kolder
Headquarters	San Jose, California, USA
Key people	John Fry, CEO William Randy Fry, President David Fry, CFO/CIO Kathy Kolder, Executive Vice President
Industry	Consumer electronics retail
Revenue	$2.35 billion (2007) [1]
Employees	14,000 (2007) [1]
Website	www.frys.com

Fry's Electronics is a specialty retailer of software, consumer electronics, computer hardware and household appliances with a chain of superstores headquartered in Silicon Valley. Starting with one store located in Sunnyvale, California, by 2007 the chain posted sales of $2.35 billion with 34 stores located in several Western states, two in Georgia, eight in Texas, one in Illinois, one in Indiana and two in Arizona.^[1]

Contents 1 History 1.1 Store Themes 2 Criticism 3 House brands 4 Online sales operation 5 Domain name acquisitions 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

In 1972, Charles Fry sold the Fry's Supermarkets chain for $40 million and gave a portion of the proceeds to each of his sons, John, Randy, and Dave.^[2] The Fry brothers had little interest in grocery store retailing. Instead, in 1985, they joined together with a fourth partner, Kathryn Kolder, to open the first Fry's Electronics store at a 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m²) site in Sunnyvale, California.^[3] Today, Fry's Food and Drug stores are owned and operated by Kroger and are not affiliated with Fry's Electronics, although they share a similar logo.^[4]

The original Sunnyvale store (located near the intersection of Oakmead Parkway and Lakeside Drive) stocked numerous high-tech supplies such as integrated circuits, test and measurement equipment, and computer components, as well as software and various other types of consumer electronics. The store also sold T-shirts, technical books and magazines including Playboy. At first, approximately half the store was stocked with groceries including fresh produce, but the groceries section quickly diminished to displays of soft drinks and snack foods.

The second store was in Fremont, California, on Mission Court, and pioneered the "theme" stores. It had a space theme and had many artifacts from the original Battlestar Galactica TV series.^{[citation needed]} This was the first store that had people from Industrial Light and Magic help design the store environments.^{[citation needed]}

As the business expanded, the original Sunnyvale store was closed, and a newer, larger store was opened across Lawrence Expressway on Kern Avenue. The second Sunnyvale store was designed to look like the interior of a giant computer; the walls were adorned with simulated circuit components, and the floor resembled a giant printed circuit board. The exterior was painted to mimic a huge DIP integrated circuit, and the door handles emulated the ENTER and ESC keys on a Computer keyboard. As of 2007, this store is now a Sports Basement store (which still bears some of the door handle keys); Fry's moved to the current Sunnyvale location (shown in the images).

Because Fry's stores are enormous, often stocking dozens of variations of a single product, they are popular with electronics and computer hobbyists. As of 2005, Best Buy is the main competitor to Fry's, but Fry's stores have more retail floor space and have a wider selection. In addition, while Best Buy sells fully built computers, Fry's also sells computers and components so that consumers can build their own.

As of May 2007, Fry's Electronics operates 34 brick-and-mortar stores in nine U.S. states: California (17 stores - Most Recent: Roseville, California); Texas (8); Arizona (2); Georgia (2); Illinois (1); Indiana (1); Nevada (1); Oregon (1); and Washington (1).

[edit] Store Themes

Following the lead of the Fremont store, new Fry's locations continued the use of elaborate themes and various designed props until well into the late 1990s. For example, the Burbank store which opened in 1995 is themed upon 1950s and 1970s science fiction movies, and features huge statues of popular characters such as the robot Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still and Darth Vader from the Star Wars movie series. In addition, 100-foot-long giant ants (from the movie Them!) hang from the ceiling, and the bodies of 1957 Chevys and Buicks serve as dining tables in the cafe. A flying saucer protrudes above the entrance. With construction, land purchase and theming, the Burbank store cost $15 million to open.^{[citation needed]}

Some additional themes include, California stores: Tahiti (Manhattan Beach), Ancient Rome (Fountain Valley), Wild West (Palo Alto), Mayan temple at Chichen Itza (San Jose), Alice in Wonderland (Woodland Hills), History of Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale), Ancient Egypt (Campbell), 1893 Chicago World's Fair (Fremont), Industrial Revolution (City of Industry), California Gold Rush (Sacramento), NASA Space Center (Anaheim), 19th-Century California Railroads (Roseville), and Atlantis (San Marcos). Arizona stores: Aztec temple (Phoenix). Nevada stores: History of the Strip (Las Vegas). Texas Stores: Music Industry (Austin), History of Irving (Irving), Lazy-K Ranch (Dallas), Oil Industry (Houston) and Space Exploration, including a replica of the International Space Station (Webster).^[5] Since Fry's acquired the Incredible Universe chain of stores, the company has reduced the elaborateness of its theming. With the opening of the Fishers, Indiana store, Fry's made a "race track" theme with various hanging displays, including "stop" and "go" signs.

[edit] Criticism

Fry's Electronics has seen criticism through the years. In 1997, Forbes reported on a series of issues relating to Fry's customer service issues and somewhat unorthodox business practices. Among the findings, an internal policy identified as "the double H" or "hoops and hurdles" was alleged to have been designed and employed in part to excessively delay or prevent customers from obtaining refunds.^[6]

In 1998, Fry's received attention when it was published that a number of customers had been reporting frustrating customer service experiences at Fry's stores.^[7]

Fry's pays its employees' benefits using a VEBA (Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association), and maintains a policy that all employees forfeit any accrued vacation pay upon leaving the company, even when employees work in states like California which mandate that vacation benefits accrue and are to be treated as wages.^[8] Employee discounts at the store start very small, and grow very gradually over several years of continuous service.

Much of its customer base being well acquainted with technology and the Internet, the retail chain was often perceived in a negative light for its late entry into the online retail arena. Their initial strategy to brand the site under acquired domain Outpost.com only added more fuel to the arguments of such technologists who accused Fry's of ineptitude in understanding the nature of their professed niche.

Fry's has received frequent criticism from customers, who have accused them of utilizing “Orwellian″ security tactics in the store. An example is a policy in which customers are subjected to a voluntary receipt check, after walking a few dozen feet from the register to the exit doors. When customers have taken offense, they usually will predicate their objections on ample shoplifting detection measures already being in place that are far less invasive, such as the dozens of clearly visible security cameras, and assumed security team monitoring them.

Fry's advertising methods have also gone under heavy fire. In 2003, actors Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sued Fry's for $10 million each for posting their images on television sets on their print ads and flyers without permission.^[9]

On Black Friday 2007 customers at the Renton, Washington location complained that Fry's employees were offering to let people cut in front of a long line for a fee. After complaints in the media Fry's management offered anyone who paid the fee their money back.^[10]

In 2008, Fry's vice president of merchandising and operations, Ausuf Umar Siddiqui, was charged by federal prosecutors in an illegal kick back scheme involving Fry's vendors. The alleged scheme was designed to defraud the company in order to cover Siddiqui's gambling expenses.^[11]

[edit] House brands

In addition to selling many major PCs brands, Fry's also sells two models of in-house PC designs. Their flagship Fry's PCs compete with similarly featured Microsoft Windows PC offerings from Hewlett-Packard, Sony, and Compaq. In addition, they offer a lower-end model branded as Great Quality (or "GQ") PCs. GQ PCs tend to be Fry's most inexpensive PC offerings, often priced in the sub-$200 range during daily and weekly sales. GQ PCs are often bundled with the Linspire Linux based OS as well as Windows, one of the few Linux offerings available in a retail PC configuration. Some of their Linux PCs feature AMD Geode processors, a processor normally used for embedded computing applications. They also market accessories like cables and CD-R discs under the GQ brand name. Also notable are the ECS brand motherboards that are frequently bundled with processors to make them virtually free. The GQ brand of computers has not been sold at most of the stores now for over a year.

Emprex brand products are manufactured by Behavior Tech Computer (BTC) of Taiwan for Fry's Electronics. Products marketed under the brand include high-definition televisions, flash drives, and computer peripherals such as monitors.

[edit] Online sales operation

Fry's Electronics was late in establishing an online sales presence. They began offering low-cost Internet access in 2000 through their original Web address "Frys.com".^[12] The company later bought e-commerce website Cyberian Outpost on November 2001 and started online sales with a different URL (Outpost.com),^[13] which confused customers who didn't associate the online name with the brick-and-mortar store.^[14] In October 2006, a grand re-opening of Frys.com introduced the online store with the same name as the retail outlets.^[15][16] The outpost.com URL now redirects to the frys.com online store.

[edit] Domain name acquisitions

The domain name frys.com was owned in 1997 by David Peter, who manufactured and sold french-fry vending machines under the business name Frenchy Frys. Fry's Electronics brought suit against him that year, alleging trademark infringement,^[17] and ultimately prevailed in a default judgement.^[18][19]

The domain name fryselectronics.com was first registered in 1999, but apparently fell prey to domain name squatters.

Since then, Fry's Electronics has aggressively tried to defend its trademark and domain names. In 2001, it successfully prosecuted a man who was posting its own print ads on the Web using the domain frysad.com.^[20] In 2007, Fry's Electronics lost a domain dispute against Prophet Partners Inc., an online advertising company with thousands of generic and descriptive domain names. The arbitrator dismissed the complaint, which requested transfer of the Frys.us domain, ruling that Fry's Electronics did not have any more right to use the "Fry's" mark, than other entities with a similar surname or commercial use of the word.^[21]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Fry's Electronics official website
• Fry's Electronics History