Silicon Valley nerds have been lonelier since Fry’s Electronics shut down in February 2021 in the midst of the pandemic. The electronics store chain was an embodiment of the valley’s tech roots.
But Micro Center, an electronics retailer from Ohio, has opened its 29th store in Santa Clara, California. And so the nerd kingdom has returned. I see this as a big deal, following up on the opening of the Nintendo store — the second in the country after New York — in San Francisco earlier this month. After years of bad economic news, it’s nice to see signs that the Bay Area is coming back.
But this isn’t just any store. It’s a symbol — a sign that shows tech still has a physical presence in Silicon Valley, in addition to places like the Buck’s Restaurant, the Denny’s where Nvidia started, the Intel Museum, the Computer History Museum, the California Academy of Sciences and the Tech Museum of Innovation. Other historic hangouts for techies like Walker’s Wagon Wheel, Atari’s headquarters, Lion & Compass — even Circuit City — have long since closed. But hey, we’ve got the Micro Center store, and the Apple spaceship is not that far away.
The grand opening week has been going well and I got a tour of the superstore from Dan Ackerman, a veteran tech journalist who is editor-in-chief at Micro Center News. As I walked into the place, Ackerman was finishing a chat with iFixit, a tech repair publication which has its own space for podcasts inside the store. That was unexpected, as I’ve never seen a store embrace social media in such a way.
Nearby was the Knowledge Bar, where you can get all your tech questions answered — much like the Genius Bars in Apple Stores. And there were repair tables out in the open.
There are a lot of things for tech enthusiasts can like about Micro Center. First, it’s not as sprawling as Fry’s, which had zany themes like ancient Egypt and a weird mix of electronics goods as well as household appliances, cosmetics, magazines and tons of snack foods. (The Egyptian-themed Campbell, California Fry’s store that I drove by often was 156,000 square feet, and now it’s home to a pickleball court complex). Fry’s was a store that stereotyped nerds and Silicon Valley, which also had its own HBO television show that carried on the stereotypes.
The Micro Center store, by contrast, is smaller at 40,000 square feet and stocked with many more practical nerd items. For the grand opening, this store had the very practical product of more than 4,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) in stock from Nvidia (which just launched its 50 Series GPUs) and AMD, Ackerman told me. Some of those graphics cards cost as much as $4,000.
“There were people waiting to get to the GPUs,” Ackerman said.
On display was a gold-plated graphics card that was being auctioned off for charity. It was signed by Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO.
“I joke that whoever wins the bid should get a Jensen leather jacket as well,” said Ackerman.
And this Micro Center store has a good location (5201 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Santa Clara) that is just a six-minute drive from Apple’s worldwide headquarters and (perhaps better yet) a one-minute walk from the Korean Hair Salon.
Micro Center had a previous store in Silicon Valley, near Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara. But that store close in 2012 because the company couldn’t negotiate better terms with the landlord. For its return to the Bay Area, Micro Center bided its time and came back at a time when many other retail chains were failing. It proves that the once proud region — the birthplace of electronics — still merits its own electronics store.
Sure, we have Target, Best Buy and Walmart selling lots of electronics gear. But there’s nothing like the Akihabara electronics district in Japan, which is full of multi-story electronics stores and gaming arcades.
But this store is loaded with today’s modern top gear, like AI PCs, Ubiquity home networking gear, and dyes for multi-colored water-cooling systems. Vendors like Razer and Logitech had their own sections. Ackerman was pleased to show me the USB-C to USB-A adapter in stock, among many obscure items. And he showed me the inventory machine that could rotate its stock of 3D-printing filaments and give you the exact SKU that you scanned with a bar code.
“That’s super fun. I call it Mr. Filaments,” Ackerman said of the inventory robot.
There’s a section for hobbyists who like single-board computing and DIY projects. There’s a set of video, audio and digital content creation tools for content creators. All told, there are more than 20,000 products and over 100 tech experts who can help. It even has the numbered cashier locations where you can check out — the same kind of checkout stands that Fry’s had.
Customers can receive authorized computer service for brands like Apple, Dell, and HP, benefiting from same-day diagnostics and repairs, thanks to over 3,000 parts on hand through partnerships with leading OEMs. I only wish it had a help desk for Comcast.
Micro Center started in 1979 in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a surprise there aren’t more nerd stores, given how ubiquitous tech is around the world these days.
But Ackerman said, “These guys are really doing it right, picking and choosing, finding the right cities, finding the right locations. That’s why Charlotte is great. Miami is a big tech hub, especially for health tech. And we’re literally five minutes away from Apple headquarters and plenty of other places. People from HP and Nvidia and other companies are coming in today to hang out.”
“Even though this store is big, the CEO (Richard Mershad) is really into curation, making sure it’s the right mix of stuff. He’s making sure it doesn’t go too far afield. So you’re not going to come in here and find, you know, hair dryers or lawncare equipment,” Ackerman said. “You’re going to find computer and home entertainment stuff, and DIY gear. There are components, just like in a Radio Shack, that hobbyists care about.”
As for the Micro Center News, Ackerman told me he has around 10 regular contributors and 20 more freelancers writing gadget reviews and other stories about tech gear. It is a kind of refuge for that vanishing breed of professional tech journalists. No wonder I was so nostalgic visiting Micro Center.
