Maplin meltdown

Yep, amazon and ebay are going to quit the UK next!

F**k All to do with brexit and more to do with not understanding a changing market coupled with poor management. Also, possibly ill advised long leases on inappropriate buildings a taken out a decade ago.

NT

I was 'geeky' knowledgeable enough to give then the codes with 4 letters instead of 5 (just to speed things up - last letter was redundant).

Been to both Westcliff & Hammersmith, and also had the luxury of one of the next London shops opening near me at Burnt Oak, which is now a rather large Costa coffee shop :(

Yup, miss the old Maplin.

Can't help but wonder if the successful Screwfix counter model could have worked with them? Would love a CPC counter shop to open somewhere in the south of England.

IMO Maplin's doom for constructors was set way back in 1994 when Saltire bought them to sell their Altai tat (their connectors were really *bad*

- I'd rather go to RS), and further when they got shot of their magazine and projects printed in the catalogue, that with the sci-fi artily drawn cover. It used to be worth paying for the publication for the data sheets within (transistor pinouts?) but then they lost that, and then the Internet 'happened'.

For old times sake, there is still a couple of copies of that toomb on my book shelf, which as a kid experimenter I knew the contents of almost as well as the text from Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Indeed, a good friend in Southend used to actually write some of the contents of the magazine and also edited their catalogue on occasion.

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I used that a lot!

And a few streets away Bi pre-pack (??) selling recycled electronic items and mainly reject (seconds) individual components, including full kits of wax coated carbon resistors. It was a mainly mail order with items bagged in quantities of 10 hence the name of the company. In the end Maplin probably took them out by selling first class specified components at similar prices.

Also the ramshackle shop, which I cannot remember the name of, on the opposite corner to the Cricketers Pub, Westcliff which had multi page adverts in some radio/hobbyist magazines. They did most business by old fashioned mail order but I fail to understand how they found anything. The whole place was stacked floor to ceiling, including the window and entrance corridor with opened boxes with the empty boxes left where they fell. The shop window floor was littered with items that had fallen from the boxes.

Was this when they re-branded Maplin Professional Supplies and then went down the Kentucky Fried Crap route and re-branded again as MPS? The large company I worked for at the time allowed purchase from them but it didn't last long - I suspect because RS/Farnell ended up cheaper. Account customers got a large discount from RS/Farnell when the annual spend was in the £100,000s. However, it was not unusual for RS/Farnell to suspend the supply of components when the invoice wasn't paid on time :)

Top end of Harrow Road (No 5 IIRC?) before the area was 'redeveloped'.

G.W. Smith

And of course Proops in Tottenham Court Road.

I was a regular visitor to all of them as I roamed around London, killing time before catching the Cornish Riviera Express, 10.30AM out of Paddington, in the late 1950's. Who could forget them! But as a young teenager wandering around Soho, Leicester Square, Lisle Street and Little Newport Street at 9AM, I used to get some odd looks from late home-goers. Quite educational!

Yes, because they don't have offices outside the UK do they? .

What, in *every* instance or just regarding Maplin (that I wasn't referring to specifically)? What part the word 'especially' didn't you get?

Why are you fanatic Brexiteers so defensive (or easily confused) or keen to deny the undeniable? ;-(

No!

Sorry, did you think you were telling me something I didn't already know? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

I still have some Maplin magazines somewhere.

Bi-Pak?

The 90s cats I've got here are still marked Maplin. So not sure when they re-branded.

I was very loyal to them at one time and bought just about all components from them. Phone them (before the internet really took hold) and things arrived first post the next day, and for free if above a certain order value. Which I was happy enough to inflate the order to. ;-) Prices were reasonably competitive.

Can't really remember what changed initially to make me look elsewhere.

Yes they have over reached themselves and now the business rates and property rents have shot up and they are not selling enough to cover it. they should have pulled back a couple of years ago, back to their core business and out of some of the less lucrative areas.

Brian

IIRC there were two - Bi-pak *and* Bi-Pre-Pak - advertising in the magazine s of the time (Practical|Everyday Electronics etc.). As a youngster I never understood whether they were one and the same, or one was copying the other .

I grew up with a printed copy of the Henry's catalogue to drool over... I o nly ever got to visit the shop in Edgeware Road many years after its prime.

Jon N

They had more than one. The Edgeware Road Flyover took one out, though.

Sendz Components. Marvellous place :)

Can't recall when as I was working and living overseas lots during the

By the time they realised the potential of the industrial market for more than just electronics they were crushed by the like of RS & Farnell with their ever expanding and massive stocklines plus having all the existing customers who had been using them for decades. Farnell iirc never went beyond two very thick catalogue volumes, RS iirc ended up with six varying size volumes at one point.

What we don't have in the UK is the likes of McMaster Carr that they have in the US.

Literally what seemed like hundreds of thousands mechanical product lines, next day delivery to the mainland US on almost everything from a tiny setscrew to a large UK flag.

The printed catalogues are (were?) huge, around the size of the CPC catalogues at 3000 pages or so with a high product density per page. Guaranteed eye strain and arm strain within a few minutes.

I worked for a startup ISV in the late 1990's, and although we were mostly software, we bought quite a lot of hardware. Initially, that was all through Maplin because I knew them from my hobby, but eventually we wanted more specialist things they didn't stock, so I applied for an RS account. Back came reams of paperwork to fill in. A few days later, with the paperwork still in my in-tray, and Farnell salesman knocked on the door and said "Can I open a credit account for you?". I said yes, and they didn't require any paperwork. Maplin and RS both lost out to that. It was one hell of a coincidence - I did wonder if someone inside RS was leaking data out to their competitors.

When I was at Sun Microsystems, we often put in CPC orders for staff (not for Sun itself - CPC wasn't on their list of suppliers). CPC set up a Staff sales scheme for us with a 10% discount after which it got to around 2-3 per week and the annual value over £25k.

I think Maplin made some wrong decisions over the years. I think there would be a market for them to be something resembling CPC retail outlet, and although electronics reduced as a hobby in perhaps the 1980's and

I think they missed a big opportunty. That may mean there's a chance for someone else to see this and buy part of the business, but that's generally harder than fixing things before running in to the buffers.

And as someone said, I really can't imagine why bothering to stock up with loads of £14 HDMI leads when you can buy them from Poundland

Apropos not much, I always considered Maplin a bit of a toy shop rather than a serious electronics components supplier, even back in the 80's. I was spoiled by having Electrovalue in walking distance though, anyone remember them? Spent hours queuing there on Saturday mornings. Problem with Maplin was they never seemed to have everything in stock, and if you're building something, missing even one part is a killer.

Later discovered Farnell, and even got a trade account set up while still at Uni, at their suggestion. This was in sharp contrast to RS, who wouldn't even let me have a catalogue. Put a lot of business in Farnells direction since then, and precisely none to RS.

Not surprised Maplins are on the rocks. As has been said, town centre retail is dead. Battle the car-hating councils obstacle course to get there in the first place. Pay more in parking than for next-day delivery. Dodge the chuggers and beggars to get to the one store you actually need to visit. No wonder there's only pound shops, betting shops and takeaways left, it's only fit for people with lots of free time and no money.