Maplin meltdown

Yup. Take Cambridge as an example. They dont WANT cars anywhere NEAR the town

Presumably they think that the pointy headed cyclists will be enoogh customers to keep the town centre alive. History shows its dying though

Yes. Excellent catalogue with pinouts for TTL - but that was in the '70s. I visited them too, but had to drive.

don't forget hairdressers & barbers

I was thinking about them yesterday when the whole Maplin thing blew up. Let me see...Englefield Green, Egham?

Used them quite a bit although only by mail order.

Indeed, although I used their phone services (touch tone, then BBS) to order.

I happened to meet someone at a computer auction in Essex, and they put me on to CPC. I use CPC, Farnell, Rapid and RS depending on what I want. More esoteric stuff comes from Mouser and Digikey.

Although they did (originally) have a policy of using the less expensive end of town in many case. In Chatham it was Luton Arches (next to the murder scene I mentioned before), in Brighton the London Road shopping centre (the most down market of the three main ones). In Canterbury it's Vauxhall Road, which isn't much better.

Canterbury isn't much better. I've not gone into Canterbury much in years, except recently once a week for the part time retirement job!

they would survive if they cut down the number of assistants that ask if they can help from five to one ....

That was the HQ, yes. For me it was the northern branch, Burnage Lane in Manchester. Now it's a hairdressers.

Randomuselessfact, they were one of the first places you could buy blue LEDs. The price was listed as (something like) 31.34. A later edition of the catalogue added "POUNDS EA" to that line only, just to make it clear.

I switched to shopping in Bury St Edmunds to avoid the sodding cyclists in the pedestrian zone in Cambridge.

At least Canterbury has car parks and they seem to be switching to ANPR and online automatic charging instead of Pay & Display.

Newmarket is better

There's good business in expensive toys at the moment.

Trying to compete at the 99p and £9.99 end of the market with china eb ay is a no-goer though.

Owain

Maybe not a key part but certainly a part. Hosting a Maker Event ought to high up their list but they hadn't paid much attention to that area. They have a few Raspberry Pi kits, one or two Aurdino's and just a handful of things from the huge range of Adafruit products.

I wouldn't be surprised if you dug about a bit to find funding for such events from a STEM budget somewhere.

The earliest commerically viable LEDs were initially 130 quid a pop from a Japanese manufacturer. One lunchtime a quick calculation demonstrated a colour telly with an LED display was going to cost at that point in time some 60 million quid or so.

They were a rather odd company. Not that far from here, in Mitcham. Had a counter in a newish block, with the same oldbloke always serving. Then moved to Wimbledon, but always seemed to be closed. Then disappeared.

I still have their 'Good Companion' tranny portable which I built, bought from my first salary, and it still works, although I don't. ;-) 55 years old.

Oxford started the whole Park & Ride concept.

Reminds me of buying some cable in Maplin in Luton many years ago. They check the computer, yes they have plenty. Go and find it - only 1 metre on the drum.

When will you get some more in? We can't get any more because the computer says we have lots.

But in London - a corner site at the north end of Waterloo Bridge, Tottenham Court Road, A big shop in Great Portland Street, a corner site near St Pauls. Edgeware Road, etc.

Charity shops and mobile phone shops. (Why does a shopping centre need three or four mobile phone shops? Why does it need *any*? Surely just a shelf in a hardware store or supermarket.)

I was living in Leigh on Sea when that shop opened. There was a sort of magic: we'd never had a shop quite like that before and what's more, it wasn't in London, it was in our neighbourhood. Unfortunately, several of the local second-hand radio junk shops in Westcliff closed shortly after. The business actually started in a private house around the corner from my in-laws in Rayleigh.

Nick

So how does supermarket stock control work?