Many shelves at Fry’s continue to be bare, and employees are sometimes hard to find in the large stores. But the Bay Area-based electronics chain says it “has you covered” for the holidays.
This week, Fry’s circulated a press release inviting customers to shop online on Thanksgiving, and urging them to sign up online to take advantage of promo codes and deals on Black Friday, when stores will open at 8 a.m. instead of the usual 10 a.m.
The offer of savings comes despite continued speculation — from Fry’s birthplace of Silicon Valley to Southern California and other locations around the nation — about whether the retailer will survive in the age of Amazon and amid the U.S.-China trade war.
In September, Fry’s told this news organization and others that it was switching to a consignment model, in which suppliers get paid only after Fry’s sells their wares at its stores, which is why the stock was low at its locations. The company also said that besides closing its Palo Alto store because it could not renew the lease, it had no plans to close its 33 stores in nine states and was preparing to gear up for the holidays.
But with holiday season here and shelves still empty, concerns about the stores’ viability persist.
On Twitter, people describe the stores as “near dead,” “withering on the vine” or a “ghost town.”
At the Concord location Tuesday — where the lone holiday decorations were a couple of LED light trees for sale — a shopper who did not want to be identified said he doubted he would find the cordless mouse he wanted, but he was able to pick up the batteries he needed immediately. “I do 70% of my shopping online,” he said.
In response to questions about whether Fry’s still plans to stock up for the holidays, as it said it intended, spokesman Manuel Valerio said this week: “Additional product has arrived, and more is in transit to each of our locations. The transition to a consignment model has been a longer process than anticipated, but our goal remains to restock our stores as quickly as possible.”
Retail analyst Neil Saunders of GlobalData said most retailers put what they want to sell during the holidays out on their shelves by Black Friday. “The only inventory that’s held back is some that retailers might want to save for Christmas,” he said.
As for staffing levels, Valerio said Fry’s would be adding workers “on an as-needed, store-by-store basis.” On job sites such as Glassdoor, store employees say their hours have been cut and many of them are working part time.
