I tried searching for existing F.Y.E. threads, but "F.Y.E." is not a searchable term, so...

Ten-plus years after the F.Y.E. store at my local mall closed, a new and revamped "F.Y.E." has now opened in a space at that same mall.

As far as music goes, they have a bunch of of vinyl, while a modest bargain bin of CD's and DVD's can be found towards the back of the store. Most of the store is dedicated to toys, games, and collectibles. Which, I suppose, makes sense--that there are at least three other stores in the same mall now selling Funkos, action figures, franchise-related clothing/collectibles, toys and whatnot.

The weird thing is that the all of the local independent stores that were in business ten years ago are still all in business. (At least the stores I patronized.) Two of them have even expanded into larger spaces. There are also scattered used vinyl stores out there. in short, the indies effectively defeated the chain stores. Who would have predicted it? (And does anybody have any idea what's next?)

Actually, I think it was Amazon that defeated the chains. They couldn't react in time to the behemoth and didn't have the vast sums of capital that Amazon commands. Indies were often able to survive because they were used to operating on a much smaller budget and can switch to new revenue streams far quicker than a corporation.
Also, while you may still have all the same independent stores in your area, I think that's an outlier as most have been pretty severely hit. The great ones weathered the storm.
F.Y.E. was acquired back in 2020 by Canadian chain Sunrise, itself a small regional chain to that point which ran about 10 stores in southern Ontario, declared bankruptcy, reorganized with new financing and bought HMV when IT was going bankrupt, and now is trying to revive F.Y.E. in the US. There are currently a handful of F.Y.E. stores in Canada, which we had never had here before.

The two FYEs in my area went through the same metamorphosis and now they're both now gone. The whole "pop culture gear" shift seems to be a sad attempt to stave off the inevitable.

same in northeast ohio-------music-------music and movies-----------music and movie memorabilia and clothing----toys--------closed

Kind of how it went for Tower toward the end too.

We have several of the F.Y.E. stores in this area.

I was surprised.