We had a major grand opening for Fry's in the North County San Diego area recently. It seems quite likely things will be the same for the Renton store.
Major grand opening sale ads will appear on Friday and Saturday. These ads will feature items at lower than normal sale prices. Many will be good for only one day and first come first serve limited quantities. They will heavily stock the items but people will line up around the building and huge quantities of hot items will be grabbed up quickly. There may be semi's next to side loading doors to bring in more of an item like a sale TV. People tend to start lining up very early and some people have to wait to enter until others exit. Traffic in the store will grow as it seems every cart has a big tv in it. The checkout line will soon wind through almost all the asiles. Here they had 70 checkouts going so the line moved along quite well.
Some popular items at the recent opening here included a 25" Sharp TV for $99 (no rebates) , a Kogi 15" TFT monitor for $150 (net of rebates), a Canon i330 for $29.95, and better than normal deals on memory, hard drives, etc. There are non-computer items priced exceptionally as well such as a Rival steam iron for $3, a washer and dryer for something like $299, low prices on dvd players, etc. Similar offers were made the second day but items changed. There was a 27" Toshiba TV, a 17" TFT monitor, etc.
After the first two days, Fry's sale ads continued to promote the grand opening but prices were more typical of Fry's sale ads which appear on each day except Tuesday and Thursday. Friday ads are multi-page and prices are usually good through the following Tuesday as are ad prices on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Wednesday ad prices are good through Thursday.
As some others have written, Fry's non-sale prices aren't anything special. A knowledgable buyer can, however, find very good prices on selected sale items. Many involve rebates, sometimes two rebates one to the manufacturer and one to Fry's.
For the grand opening, Fry's will have flown in personnel for other areas to help with the chaos and to provide help to customers. New employees may know very little but the more experienced ones may be more helpful than will be the case once, after about a week, the imported employees go home.
Although it can be a hassle to stand in line to return an item, especially right after the first days of a grand opening, I have never had trouble returning items. One might buy a 15" TFT monitor on day one and, seeing a 17" one on day 2,decide to get it and return the smaller one. On an ongoing basis, sale items do tend to repeat but prices may be higher on some items offered the first two days. Fry's will pick a few items to draw heavy traffic.
Unfortunately, there is no good way to learn of Fry's sale items except through the print ads. I hope someone will take time to post ads or a list of hot items for the grand opening. If you want to get a feel for a Fry's ad, you can see scanned ads for Orange County at this link:
»ads.myoc.com/onlineads/ocr/index.jsp?c..[?]
Scroll down until you see the link to Fry's.