Fry's Electronics

First up...

Over the past five years, Fisher's economic development officials have repeatedly tried to find a new use for the former Fry's Electronics property along Interstate 69 with no discernible success.

Bikishui digs into the reasons why progress has been so slow.

Also in this week's issue, Cameron Shaw reports that landlords are confronting a new threat you wouldn't expect for a brick-and-mortar style business, artificial intelligence.

Because they could, you know, get more people through so you didn't have to have as wide, you know, as wide of a network of people.

Do you remember, what was that place, Fry's Electronics? Do you remember that? I do remember Fry's.

Okay.

The thing that Fry's was like famous for was having like a thousand checkout lines.

So we got into that product type as well and expanded into different markets.

And we formed a venture with the owner of Fry's Electronics, if you know those stores.

They're popular.

I went

And so we've got a few joint ventures with them, one in Irving, Texas.

We converted into self-storage, one in Sacramento, one in Burbank.

So the story is Fry's Electronics no longer exists,

correct? That's correct.

And then you go to Best Buy or

Fry's Electronics to get a TV? I think it was actually stolen from the house.

Oh!

Oh, okay.

And if someone doesn't respond within 30, you know, certain amount of timeframe, then local law enforcement is dispatched, right? They have cameras, surveillance, you know, all these things from a physical perspective has been thought out and deployed properly.

On the cybersecurity side, though, you know, their water pump booster systems, their control systems, and their SCADA HMIs and workstations that control, you know, and monitor the water operations are usually connected to a small little switch that you can find at Best Buy or Fry's Electronics, you know, off-the-shelf commercial grade, small little D-linked kind of switch.

It's not even industrially hardened.

that switch is connected to the internet provider for that site.

huge.

It's like walking around a Fry's electronics.

Honestly, it's a little like that.

I've never had a local comic shop that's as big as Madness.

I'm still on this.

Go ahead.

Um, have you ever been to a Fry's Electronics?

Uh, once with you, I thought.

I bought the company nine years ago.

And it started as a break-fix company to do computers and laptops for companies like CompuSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's Electronics.

They did all the repair way before Geek Squad.

So 30 years ago, your computer broke, or 25 years ago, where do you go? So you brought it into a CompUSA, but then we outsourced some of it at the time to ImageMicro.

I was living in the Bay Area at the time, and I was headed to work.

I worked at f- this company called Fry's Electronics.

I was the undercover, basically, like, uh, prevention officer.

So I would catch, uh, people stealing, but mainly employees.