Originally posted by: Trikat
All those pics were from inside of the outside of Fry's? That looks like luxury electronic store... What do they sell in there? Is it like a best buy? I know outpost and fry's website is electronics, but this is like that hotel lobby someone mentioned about. I hope a Fry's opens in Raleigh, NC soon. Even better I hope one opens in Cary, but there is too much competition in Cary.
A "Taj-Mahal" for nerds is the best description. The Austin Fry's is jaw-dropping if you haven't been there before (and are into that kind of thing, of course) -- all marble and tile floors, and is music-themed. The right side is computer parts like power supplies, motherboards, disk drives, electronics (including raw chips and board-etching kits which are hard to find these days); the right rear is like a CompUSA (laptops, video cards, supplies) and a huge tech book section; the left rear is TVs, plasma panels, hifi listening rooms; further forward is telephones, small and large appliances like vaccums, washing machines, blenders, cofffeemakers; in the center is a coffeeshop/sandwiches/icecream bar, in front of that are DVDs, Video games, and CDs: etc. Sprinkled throughout are high-tech toys, laser pointers, those nifty super-bright LED flashlights that they always seem to have on sale, storage bins, you name it. If it's nerdy, they have it. The entire store is about the size of a football field.
The best part is the loss-leader sales ads that appear in the paper midweek. This week, I see they have 160GB 8MB buffer Maxtor drives for $99 after rebate. Damn.... and the most amazing part, to me is that they have not *once* run out of a loss-leader in the two years I've been going there. Try that at CompUSA -- if you're not there within two hours of opening on Sunday, the shelves are bare.
So you can see why much of the country has Fry's envy. We did until we got ours two years ago and I'm sure there was a lot of excitement about "San Marcos" for folks in San Antonio and south Austin until we learned it's not San Marcos, TX.
The real question is why do they have such a tacky website (not Outpost, which doesn't seem to have much to do with Fry's except share ownership, but Frys.com).
The day after thanksgiving last year, there was a 3 hour (!) wait to checkout. We went in, looked around, and left--it was ridiculous (I know it was 3 hours because my mother-in-law was in line with a basket full of stuff and that's how long it took her). One "innovation" is that they have a single checkout line, where you walk past tons of impulse-buy merchandise, soda, candy, beef jerky, marked-down games, etc. and at the end, a greeter dispatches you to individual checkstands (70 in Austin). Best Buy is now doing it that way too, but it's a pale imitation. That didn't help on this day--lines snaked all throughout the store and the aisles were clogged.