Fry’s Electronics, one of the last big brick-and-mortar electronics store chains in the United States — and a Silicon Valley institution in particular — is permanently closing nationwide, local broadcaster KRON4 has confirmed, following a report from Bill Reynolds and another from Matthew Keys.
The company’s Facebook page is also gone and its Twitter feed has been set to private — it was public earlier this evening, though it hadn’t tweeted in quite some time.
If you’ve ever visited a Fry’s anytime in the past two to three years, none of this will come as a surprise.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the family-owned business had been pushed to the brink of extinction by online retailers like Amazon, Newegg and more. Initially, the company started a campaign to price-match any item you could find online. It added a children’s toy aisle, huge racks of As Seen on TV gadgets, even perfume. But things got worse. By 2019, what used to be a paradise of gadgets,…