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Private company

Good Guys

Logo: The Good Guys, Inc., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons3

Defunct Consumer electronics retailer

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.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

Jul 1973Founded1

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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.2

Products and brands

In 1995, The Good Guys teamed up with Tower Records to create one "WOW!" Store in Las Vegas, Nevada, featuring a mixture of Tower and Good Guys inventory and 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, California, where Neil Diamond played at the grand opening and others opened in Laguna Hills and San Mateo, California. By 2006, Tower was bankrupt and Good Guys was being consolidated into CompUSA; thus, all of the Good Guys stores closed.

From Wikipedia’s article on Good Guys (American company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Timeline

  1. 2003Dissolved Dissolved1
  2. Jul 1973Founded Founded1

Sources

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