My local Fry’s as a teen was the hub for putting returns back on the shelves for multiple other Fry’s (or so I was told). It was not uncommon to buy a motherboard that had some kind of issue and to have to return it to the store, sometimes even two or three times.
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Yep, if it had a sticker, do not buy.
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If I had to bet the original owners made their money and pretty much turned it over to others to run while they sat back and counted the cash. Once it got so bad they just decided to close rather than put the effort into making it a solid business again.
Basically they made their money and said the heck with it.
OR
Their warehouses were a front for some shady stuff.
Like mattress stores. Only not successful.
Generally it’s not that complicated. In a private business like that usually the owner just gets tired of messing with it and just reaps the rewards and it goes to crap. Running any business well is a ton of work, lots of 16-18 hour days and most people can only do that for so long.
Plus if they were running a front it would have came out after this many years. Usually someone figures it out that works for them and it gets out.
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Apparently you aren’t too far off with shady, but not the owners exactly
On the Texas Reddit someone posted a link to an old story, they said it was just scratching the surface of what went down. There was some scandal that started in 2008 where the VP stole 65 million and a bunch of vendors got screwed over. Hence, why the bare shelves. I don’t know if the owners got jaded and decided to just let it die or were involved too. I’ll probably look for some decent info when I have more time.
By Jordan Robertson
SAN FRANCISCO — A Ferrari-driving vice president of Fry’s Electronics who was allegedly such a heavyweight gambler that casinos chartered private planes to fly him to Las Vegas has been arrested on charges he embezzled more than $65 million from the retailer to fuel his lavish lifestyle and pay off debts.
Ausaf Umar Siddiqui is accused by the IRS of concocting an incredibly profitable scheme in which he cut side deals with some of Fry’s suppliers, buying their goods at higher prices than they would normally get, and buying more of them than he normally would, in exchange for kickbacks of up to 31 percent of the total sales price.
The IRS alleges in a criminal complaint filed against Siddiqui that he set up a shell company that hid $65.6 million in kickback payments from five Fry’s vendors from January 2005 to November 2008. Of that amount, $17.9 million was paid to subsidiaries of Las Vegas Sands, which operates the Venetian Casino Resort, according to the criminal complaint and regulatory filings. Authorities confirmed the payments went to the casino.
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For me Fry’s was like my Toys R Us from the moment they first came to Nevada. I even made trips to the one in Houston while I was living in Louisiana. It’s really an utter shame to see them close down after all these years.
Yeah that’s why I said I think they just stepped back and let someone else run it, weren’t really paying attention to it and let it get run into the ground. Not hard to steal stuff under those circumstances.
They probably just closed it rather than wanting to put effort into it.
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