Fry's (was goin to CA soon, to be a CC tychoon

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Sun Jun 8 18:31:01 2003

"Fred N. van Kempen" <waltje_at_pdp11.nl> wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Jun 2003, Al Kossow wrote:
> > That was their SECOND location in Sunnyvale. The first was two blocks
> > east, on the other side of Laurence Expr. MUCH smaller, but a larger
> > selection of useful stuff (like ICs).
> Er... their second? I always thought that was their first.. I mean
> the one just off of Lawrence Expwy, righthand-side when coming off
> the 237, going towards Central Expwy.. its right before where Arques
> crosses Lawrence.

Fry's Sunnyvale location has moved twice. The first was on the other
side of Lawrence, approximately behind Coco's. It was as Al said, the
sort of place you could go for ICs, connectors, Amiga RKMs, potato
chips, soda pop, and aspirin.

I'm guessing that the big difference is that Fry's now uses the
grocery-store model in the parts aisles: rather than hire
knowledgeable buyer(s) to select a good range of stock, sections of
the parts aisles are rented to to distributors who supply the stock
(and maybe even put it out on the shelves). So you get very narrow,
single-vendor selections of some types of parts.

That and, well, the target market is everyone (instead of just
Sillycon Valley geeks) now that computers are just a special case of
consumer electronics.

-Frank McConnell
Received on Sun Jun 08 2003 - 18:31:01 BST