| The Good Guys, Inc. | |
| Logo Upright: | 0.75 |
| Type: | Electronics |
| Foundation: | July 1973 |
| Location: | Brisbane, California, U.S. |
| Industry: | Retail |
| Products: | Consumer electronics |
| Homepage: | None |
| Defunct: | 2003 (acquired), 2005 (all stores renamed/closed) |
| Fate: | Acquired by CompUSA |
The Good Guys, Inc., was an American chain of consumer electronics retail stores with 71 stores in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. The company was headquartered in Brisbane, California in the Dakin Building in the early 1990s and subsequently in Alameda, California until it was bought in late 2003 by Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, who also purchased CompUSA, OfficeMax, Barnes & Noble, Office Depot, Borders, and Circuit City. The Good Guys was founded in 1973 by Ron Unkefer on Chestnut Street, San Francisco. By 2006, all of the company's stores had closed.
In 1995, The Good Guys teamed up with Tower Records to create one "WOW!" Store in Las Vegas, NV featuring a mixture of Tower and Good Guys inventory & a coffee shop, and included the world’s largest promotional slot machine. Tower's founder Russell Solomon reportedly liked the end result and two more WOW! Multimedia Superstores were opened, one in Long Beach, CA, where Neil Diamond played at the grand opening and others opened in Laguna Hills, and San Mateo, CA. By 2006, Tower was bankrupt and Good Guys was being consolidated into CompUSA and thus all of these stores closed.
After all The Good Guys stores closed, CompUSA began marketing all California and Hawaii stores as "CompUSA with The Good Guys Inside" in response to Best Buy's new marketing campaign "with Magnolia Inside". However, this marketing campaign was dropped in an attempt to further separate CompUSA from the Good Guys name, and assist in launching its new Home Entertainment sections in select locations. The Good Guys name once again ceased to exist in 2008 when CompUSA closed its remaining stores. Extended warranties on televisions purchased through The Good Guys or CompUSA can still be accessed through General Electric Extended Warranties.
In 1991, one of the stores in the chain located in Sacramento was taken over by four gunmen. This event became the largest hostage rescue operation on home soil in U.S. history to date, with about 50 hostages being held at gunpoint.[1]