Micro Center

Micro Center was founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1979 by John Baker and Bill Bayne, two former Radio Shack employees, with a $35,000 investment. Rick Mershad is the current CEO and President of Micro Center. Mershad was one of the first 10 employees of the company, starting as a Sales Associate two years after the company's founding. The first Micro Center store was established in a 900 sq ft (84 m2) storefront located in the Lane Avenue Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio. The store benefited from its proximity to Ohio State University and the scientific think-tank Battelle Memorial Institute, which provided a large customer base and a source of computer-literate salespeople. Their goal for the first year was $30 million in sales, and they achieved $29.9 million.

In the fall of 1997, Micro Center expanded into Silicon Valley by opening a store in Santa Clara, California. To compete against what was then the dominant computer retailer in California, Fry's Electronics, Micro Center stressed its better employee pay and superior customer service.

In 2009, Micro Center developed an "18-minute pickup" service where customers who order merchandise on their website can pick it up from the store in 18 minutes.

On July 23, 2012, Micro Center suddenly closed its Santa Clara store—its only one in Silicon Valley—after it was unable to negotiate a further extension of its store lease. By then, the store's front facade had already become a dated relic of the late 1990s, with long-obsolete logos from Hayes, USRobotics, Practical Peripherals, Lotus Development, and Fujifilm. A new store opened on May 30, 2025 in a different Santa Clara location formerly occupied by a Bed Bath & Beyond. The new store was welcomed as filling a significant "void" in Silicon Valley, since the 2021 closure of Fry's had left Best Buy as the only big-box electronics store chain in the area.

In January 2014, the company opened new New York City stores in Brooklyn and Queens.

As of May 2025, there are 29 Micro Center stores nationwide in 19 states, including California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. The chain opened their 30th store in Phoenix, Arizona on November 7, 2025.