Visit to Fry's - - Disappointment

[PED]

I don't live near a Fry's but I always like browsing their stuff when I am able to visit one. Been 6 years since I last visited a Fry's but I got to visit one in Plano TX today. Major dissapointment. Most of the shelves were only half full and the variety of components available seemed much less than my last visit. I asked the clerk at checkout about it and his comment was "Yea...I have heard that a lot lately" but he had no clue why.

Do other Fry's appear to have a similar situation? Is Fry's going down hill like RS?

[Southgate]

I passed up some mini toggle switches at an LHS while visiting Sacramento, knowing I was going to Fry's the next day.  The whole display of mini toggles is about 3 feet wide, 1 foot high. There was... ONE switch on one hook in the whole display, a triple pole double throw. I was after DPDTs and SPDTs. Center off.

I was told they're waiting on an order.

I was hoping that wasn't going to be a trend. Dan

[gmpullman]

While not electronics but lumber, several weeks ago I needed two, eight-foot tongue & groove treated boards for pole barn skirting. We have an independent lumber yard called Carter Lumber.

My local yard didn't have any but they told me the store in a nearby town did. My wife said she was going that way later in the day and would pick them up for me.

She came home later with a sixteen-footer sticking out the back of the truck. They didn't have any eights so they sold me this sixteen, she explained. Why didn't they cut it into two eights, I ask? We don't cut lumber for customers anymore, says the guy at the yard. I said to my wife, they won't be around long, wait and see.

Sure enough, I went by there yesterday and the yard was empty and the gate padlocked. A grim reality these days.

Regards, Ed

[Attuvian]

PED

I don't live near a Fry's but I always like browsing their stuff when I am able to visit one. Been 6 years since I last visited a Fry's but I got to visit one in Plano TX today. Major dissapointment. Most of the shelves were only half full and the variety of components available seemed much less than my last visit. I asked the clerk at checkout about it and his comment was "Yea...I have heard that a lot lately" but he had no clue why.

Do other Fry's appear to have a similar situation? Is Fry's going down hill like RS?

 

Made up a small list of items yesterday and took a 30 mile (round trip) visit to the Fry's just south of Portland.  Low on toggle switches, out of 1K ohm 1/4 watt resistors (and a half dozen other values), and 80% of the various cardboard bins for solder were empty.  Should have taken a photo of that one.  Did find a great deal on a collection of shrink tubing, though.

 

I, too, ran into wide-spread stocking problems.  It extended even to their candy shelves.  One display item did raise my eyebrows - they had plenty of packages of compression tights to be worn under jeans.  Kind of a "Twilight Zone" moment.  Made me wonder about their corporate buying and marketing strategies.

 

John

[BATMAN]

No company in their right mind is going to restock with a 26.4% Tariff/tax on the stock. They are probably hoping the tariffs will be dropped and things will go back to normal. How are you suppose to compete if Bob down the street timed it better and got his stock tariff/tax free?

I was at a huge industrial electronics store last week (in Canada near the border) and the shelves were bare because American companies were up buying stock on things they just couldn't wait for any longer. They would still have to pay the duty on the way back to the U.S. as the products originated in China, but at least they could get the parts.