Been noticing that the Tempe, AZ store has been getting more and more bare for the last 6 months or so. Finally did some research to find out why and found this site.
I was there a couple days ago and it's really depressing. Every time I go there which is usually a couple times a month, there are fewer items on the shelves and actual shelving units keep disappearing.
Bluray and DVD movies, which used to cover about six 50 ft racks has been slowly shrinking. Granted, this is probably a lot to due with consumers shifting to streaming and digital but every month the movies section got smaller and smaller and now they've finally moved them all to a 20 foot stretch of shelves.
Shrinking stock really accelerated a couple of months ago and now when you look at PC mice, keyboards, hard drives, where they used to have wall to wall products down several long rows of shelves, it looks like a looted grocery store after a natural disaster. You could literally probably condense all the stock in the store down to 1/8th of the stores current square footage.
It looks like they're in a death spiral to me. Also, within the last year they built a Frys gas station out front. Why? Is gas a money maker? I wonder how much money they've wasted on things like that and also all the money they spent on their themed stores. They put a strange golf theme on the Tempe store about 5 or 6 years ago that is just odd.
I follow their promo code emails and I've noticed how they're less and less interesting but it feels like they're desperately trying to get bodies in the store, even if they have to give the store away. For, example, for months they've frequently had Nintendo eshop cards on 10% to 20% off. This makes no sense to me. How are they discounting these and why? It can't be Nintendo so why is Frys doing this? Are they hoping once you're in the store you'll buy other stuff. I don't. I go there get the promo item and leave. They must be simply trying to get cash but they're digging themselves in a hole. Desperately discounting items to get enough cash to pay their current debt but they're not making any money so they'll only tread water this way for so long until they drown.
I've shopped there for probably fifteen years or more, however long they've been there when they bought and converted an Incredible Universe store and it's just depressing and the state of the store is probably driving people away which will accelerate their demise.