Micro Center Brand Guidelines: A 1979 Columbus Storefront, Knowledge Bars & Santa Clara

Two former Radio Shack employees and a small storefront.

Micro Center began in 1979 in Columbus, Ohio. English Wikipedia says it was founded by John Baker and Bill Bayne, two former Radio Shack employees, and that the opening store was a storefront of about 900 square feet in the Lane Avenue Shopping Center in Upper Arlington. The same article says the location suited a computer shop: it sat close to Ohio State University and to the research organisation Battelle Memorial Institute, which together supplied customers and computer-literate sales staff.

The chain is still privately held. English Wikipedia describes Micro Center as a subsidiary of Micro Electronics, Inc., a private corporation with its head office in Hilliard, Ohio. Its chief executive and president is Rick Mershad, who, according to the same article, joined two years after the founding as a sales associate and was one of the company’s earliest ten employees. In October 2025 the Phoenix television station AZFamily quoted him as chief executive when the chain announced its Arizona store.

From early on the stores sold Apple equipment alongside PCs. English Wikipedia says Micro Center has had Apple departments in its stores since 1982 and that it is an approved seller of Apple products.

Components, Knowledge Bars and a long absence from Silicon Valley.

The Micro Center format is a large single-floor computer store. English Wikipedia gives store sizes of up to about 60,000 square feet, stocking around 36,000 products across some 700 categories, a mix of major brands and the company’s own lines; it names Inland as one of those house brands. Since 2007, the same article says, the stores have included “Build Your Own PC” departments for loose components and Knowledge Bars for service and support, and in 2009 the company added an “18-minute pickup” service for orders placed on its website.

Expansion beyond the Midwest came slowly. In the autumn of 1997 Micro Center opened a store in Santa Clara, California, its only one in Silicon Valley, where it competed with Fry’s Electronics. English Wikipedia says that store closed suddenly on 23 July 2012, after the company was unable to agree a further extension of its lease. By then, the article adds, the store’s front still carried the logos of long-gone computer names such as Hayes, USRobotics, Practical Peripherals and Lotus Development, a period piece from the late 1990s. In January 2014 the chain opened two stores in New York City, in Brooklyn and Queens.

The return to the Bay Area took thirteen years. The Verge reported on 21 May 2025 that Micro Center would hold a grand opening on 30 May 2025 on Stevens Creek Boulevard in Santa Clara, noting that Fry’s and CompUSA had gone in the meantime and that the new store stood about 1.6 miles from Central Computer, one of the few local PC chains still trading. English Wikipedia adds that the new store took over a former Bed Bath & Beyond building and opened on that date.

The next new market was Arizona. AZFamily, the Phoenix television news service, reported on 30 October 2025 that Micro Center would open its 30th store near 44th Street and Thomas Road in Phoenix, with a grand opening on 7 November 2025 after two early-access “VIP Days.” The company described a store of about 35,000 square feet; the report said it would carry more than 20,000 technology products, from processors and graphics cards to networking equipment, and would include a Knowledge Bar for building, upgrading and repairing computers, with same-day repairs.

Design and documentation.

Consumer-electronics retailers present themselves first through the store. Many trade from large units on the edge of towns, with long aisles divided into product areas such as computing, television, sound, phones and kitchen appliances. Trade reports describe how these floors are laid out for trying things: in 2017 Tweakers described Coolblue’s first XXL store in Amsterdam as six product areas, and in 2026 Républik Retail described a Boulanger store near Lille with a playable gaming area and a seated space for watching projectors.

Delivery is part of the public face. Some chains run their own vans for large appliances and installation, and Coolblue says it added its own bicycle delivery service in cities in 2018. Online shops, click-and-collect counters and services for repair, trade-in, rental and refurbished goods are presented beside the shelves, often under names of their own that sit next to the shop name on signs and websites.

Naming follows a similar pattern. A chain usually keeps one short shop name and adds own-label ranges with separate names, so a single store can carry the retailer’s brand, its house labels and many outside makers side by side. French Wikipedia, for example, dates Boulanger’s Listo and Essentiel B labels to 2005. When a chain buys a rival abroad, it may keep the local name, as Boulanger did with Krëfel in Belgium after 2019.

Behind the shop fronts sit corporate pages. These usually give a founding story, the current owner and any stock-market listing or plan for one, and some owners publish their own announcements of changing stakes. This guide sets out what dated sources say about each company’s founders, owners and listings, and treats the companies’ own descriptions as their claims.

A chain defined by what is on its shelves.

As of November 2025, English Wikipedia lists 30 Micro Center stores in 20 US states, from Arizona, California and Colorado to Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia, with the Phoenix opening on 7 November 2025 as the most recent. AZFamily reported that the company said the Phoenix store was bringing 100 new jobs, and that customers who had registered for “VIP Days” could shop on 5 and 6 November before the public opening, which featured live PC builds, vendor booths and product demonstrations.

The range has shifted with its customers. In a 2015 interview cited by English Wikipedia, Mershad described how the STEM movement was leading students and adults to build their own projects, and said Micro Center was focusing on Arduino and Raspberry Pi boards, which call for more consultative selling than boxed products.

The Santa Clara and Phoenix reports both centre on the same things: the depth of the component range, the build-your-own-PC aisles and the Knowledge Bar, where staff handle builds, upgrades and repairs. The Verge framed the Santa Clara opening around graphics cards and the gap left by Fry’s; AZFamily described the Phoenix store through its processors, graphics cards, networking gear and repair counter.

For a design guide, Micro Center shows how a specialist retailer can let its range and its service counters do the work of a brand, with a name that has stayed the same for more than four decades. Compare JB Hi-Fi, the Australian electronics chain, and MediaMarkt, which also opened its earliest store in 1979. For this guide we use a solder red, graphite and a cool grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Micro Center’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.