Oh I’m glad this popped up. I was trying to remember the details of a computer store I remembered visiting with my dad when I was maybe 4 or 5, ‘93-‘94, Chicago.
But as soon as I read it all came back and I’m certain this was it. I tried looking but couldn’t find out: does anyone know if there was an Egghead in Chicago at that time? Based on what I could discern about their stores is that seems likely there would have been one there.
There was one on N Franklin in the stretch between Randolph and Monroe, or just around the corner off of Franklin on Washington or Madison. Somewhere in that area.
That probably would have been the one, since I also kind of remember driving down Wells since we would have been coming from the North (driving under the loop tracks was always so cool as a kid). Thanks!
When I was about 12 or 13, I was hanging out in my local Egghead so much playing Rebel Assault on the demo machine that the guy who worked there gave me a free mousepad just to leave the store.
I remember visiting the Egghead in Lansing, Illinois (just south of Chicago, at River Oaks south) more than once. I think I actually bought Visual Basic there at some point.
Thanks for this. Browsing the latest sierra, microprose, etc games at the local egghead store was my absolute favorite thing to do as a kid. It was in a strip mall next to an actual mall, so my parents would get me to go along on shopping trips as long as we could swing by the egghead to see what was new on the way home.
Interesting tangent (I worked at an IBM partner and my brother in law was a VP at egghead at the time):
Egghead used large as400's as their backend systems and purchased a new one for about $500,000. The people installing it at their HQ had to go up a flight of stairs but something happened and it fell down the stairs.
The insurance company paid for a replacement and the IBM sales rep got commission on 2 sales.
Few things that the article missed.
1. Software products had a huge physical size. Sometimes a single application or development environment would have 3 to five kg of serious mass. You could get it much faster by going to a store than by ordering it and waiting for it to come in the mail. And ecommerce at a distance was a somewhat iffy thing in those days pre-2k when Egghead was bleeding, and the customers were divided about 50/50 between those who wanted to buy from startup geniuses operating in the garage in their skivvies, and those who wanted to deal with market leaders who spent so much on tech support that they were doomed. If you could go to a store and evaluate the tangible reality of a product, you could see that the product was actually shipping, and you might be able to guess whether or not the firm that created it had adult supervision.
2. Software-related salaries shot up pretty fast during the 1990's, so keeping a competent staff in retail became more and more difficult as the generation that knew how the toy computers worked got old enough to get full-time jobs.
3. People liked bringing home those boxes of software, many containing over 150 tangible items (manuals, diskettes in envelopes, warranty cards, advertising, coupons, mouse pads, reference cards, keyboard decorations and cheat sheets, free trials of other software, invites to join the loozer groups, dongles ...) until the time when our offices started overflowing with it all. Then we realized how little of it had any lasting value, and that they had to buy a new version of everything at least once a year. And spouses didn't like seeing all that bling piling up.
I bought all my software as a kid at egghead! They treated me like any other customer, whether I asked for a video game or a copy of windows NT server. I miss shopping at stores for electronics, it’s not the same browsing online.
I worked at Egghead when they closed the stores. We all thought they were crazy. The stores got so many visitors. And all of us were super into tech, and had never bought anything online at that point.
Ahh, Egghead, the one time I cracked a password (by lucky guessing).
There was a floor display computer at the shop with some random demo presentation, and to exit the program you needed to enter the password. I guessed 'egg' and it worked! I was then able to play one of the Leisure Suit Larry games which was installed on it. Fun times.
I remember visiting Egghead a few times as a kid, and I think we had a T-shirt or coffee mug or something with the little character. Their little marketing character was distinctive and is definitely still recognizable all these years later.
I bought my first 40MB HDD card from an Egghead, in Boston, MA, on the same day I visited the Computer Museum ~1989 on a visit from the UK. I think the dollar-to-pound was 2:1 at the time and made it pretty reasonable.
This article dances around it superficially. My last high school job ended up working there as a sales associate and packing up of one of the stores. Just months sooner, Zip drives were selling like crazy. Really though, CompUSA and Fry's Electronics most directly killed them. EH had too many locations and they were too small. They weren't even 2000 sq ft, more like 1200-1500.
Interestingly, the store manager had a policy that any software that wasn't sealed in the box internally could be borrowed. All software of that era came on CD's and floppies in shrink wrapped cardboard boxes, and there was a shrink wrap machine and heatgun in the back room.
Also Not For Resale (NFR) copies were awesome. Like $10-30 for products that costed $50-1000 (in 1996 USD).
While local SV stores like NCA Peripherals also didn't survive because there were too many tiny and medium-sized hardware-focused stores. In the mid 80's and early 90's there were zillions of tiny, PC hardware stores in strip malls in SV similar to but more spread out than Huaqiangbei. Curiously though, Central Computer Systems were large and diversified enough with servers, networking, PC parts, and software, to survive. Micro Center also. Fry's, CompUSA, RadioShack, and CircuitCity weren't sufficiently adept at competing online when Amazon and such killed them off in turn, only BestBuy made it through so far.
Oh I’m glad this popped up. I was trying to remember the details of a computer store I remembered visiting with my dad when I was maybe 4 or 5, ‘93-‘94, Chicago.
But as soon as I read it all came back and I’m certain this was it. I tried looking but couldn’t find out: does anyone know if there was an Egghead in Chicago at that time? Based on what I could discern about their stores is that seems likely there would have been one there.
There was one on N Franklin in the stretch between Randolph and Monroe, or just around the corner off of Franklin on Washington or Madison. Somewhere in that area.
That probably would have been the one, since I also kind of remember driving down Wells since we would have been coming from the North (driving under the loop tracks was always so cool as a kid). Thanks!
When I was about 12 or 13, I was hanging out in my local Egghead so much playing Rebel Assault on the demo machine that the guy who worked there gave me a free mousepad just to leave the store.
I remember visiting the Egghead in Lansing, Illinois (just south of Chicago, at River Oaks south) more than once. I think I actually bought Visual Basic there at some point.
I would be shocked if there wan't one - they were a big chain about that time. Though already dieing, so maybe you were 3 in the memory?
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and there definitely was an Egghead in my town.
Did you live in Chicago Ridge?
Thanks for this. Browsing the latest sierra, microprose, etc games at the local egghead store was my absolute favorite thing to do as a kid. It was in a strip mall next to an actual mall, so my parents would get me to go along on shopping trips as long as we could swing by the egghead to see what was new on the way home.
Interesting tangent (I worked at an IBM partner and my brother in law was a VP at egghead at the time):
Egghead used large as400's as their backend systems and purchased a new one for about $500,000. The people installing it at their HQ had to go up a flight of stairs but something happened and it fell down the stairs.
The insurance company paid for a replacement and the IBM sales rep got commission on 2 sales.
Few things that the article missed. 1. Software products had a huge physical size. Sometimes a single application or development environment would have 3 to five kg of serious mass. You could get it much faster by going to a store than by ordering it and waiting for it to come in the mail. And ecommerce at a distance was a somewhat iffy thing in those days pre-2k when Egghead was bleeding, and the customers were divided about 50/50 between those who wanted to buy from startup geniuses operating in the garage in their skivvies, and those who wanted to deal with market leaders who spent so much on tech support that they were doomed. If you could go to a store and evaluate the tangible reality of a product, you could see that the product was actually shipping, and you might be able to guess whether or not the firm that created it had adult supervision. 2. Software-related salaries shot up pretty fast during the 1990's, so keeping a competent staff in retail became more and more difficult as the generation that knew how the toy computers worked got old enough to get full-time jobs. 3. People liked bringing home those boxes of software, many containing over 150 tangible items (manuals, diskettes in envelopes, warranty cards, advertising, coupons, mouse pads, reference cards, keyboard decorations and cheat sheets, free trials of other software, invites to join the loozer groups, dongles ...) until the time when our offices started overflowing with it all. Then we realized how little of it had any lasting value, and that they had to buy a new version of everything at least once a year. And spouses didn't like seeing all that bling piling up.
I bought all my software as a kid at egghead! They treated me like any other customer, whether I asked for a video game or a copy of windows NT server. I miss shopping at stores for electronics, it’s not the same browsing online.
I worked at Egghead when they closed the stores. We all thought they were crazy. The stores got so many visitors. And all of us were super into tech, and had never bought anything online at that point.
Ahh, Egghead, the one time I cracked a password (by lucky guessing).
There was a floor display computer at the shop with some random demo presentation, and to exit the program you needed to enter the password. I guessed 'egg' and it worked! I was then able to play one of the Leisure Suit Larry games which was installed on it. Fun times.
I (my parents) got my copy of X-Wing from our local Egghead in the 90s. And Lemmings! I loved browsing that store as a kid.
I remember visiting Egghead a few times as a kid, and I think we had a T-shirt or coffee mug or something with the little character. Their little marketing character was distinctive and is definitely still recognizable all these years later.
I bought my first 40MB HDD card from an Egghead, in Boston, MA, on the same day I visited the Computer Museum ~1989 on a visit from the UK. I think the dollar-to-pound was 2:1 at the time and made it pretty reasonable.
Until reading this, I always kind of wondered if NewEgg was the modern-day online incarnation of Egghead. It's not.
Back in the 90s, I would go into my local Egghead software store almost every weekend.
See also Electronics Boutique, which eventually got eaten by GameStop.
This article dances around it superficially. My last high school job ended up working there as a sales associate and packing up of one of the stores. Just months sooner, Zip drives were selling like crazy. Really though, CompUSA and Fry's Electronics most directly killed them. EH had too many locations and they were too small. They weren't even 2000 sq ft, more like 1200-1500.
Interestingly, the store manager had a policy that any software that wasn't sealed in the box internally could be borrowed. All software of that era came on CD's and floppies in shrink wrapped cardboard boxes, and there was a shrink wrap machine and heatgun in the back room.
Also Not For Resale (NFR) copies were awesome. Like $10-30 for products that costed $50-1000 (in 1996 USD).
While local SV stores like NCA Peripherals also didn't survive because there were too many tiny and medium-sized hardware-focused stores. In the mid 80's and early 90's there were zillions of tiny, PC hardware stores in strip malls in SV similar to but more spread out than Huaqiangbei. Curiously though, Central Computer Systems were large and diversified enough with servers, networking, PC parts, and software, to survive. Micro Center also. Fry's, CompUSA, RadioShack, and CircuitCity weren't sufficiently adept at competing online when Amazon and such killed them off in turn, only BestBuy made it through so far.