Maplin meltdown

[John Rumm]

ISTR they advertised extensively in the electronics mags of the time, so quite likely.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You've just said they all have the same barcode. So how does the till identify it?

[dennis]

Stop trolling!

[ARW]

The Doncaster Maplins branch recently turned half of it's car park into a McDonalds.

Some of the staff at that Maplins were quite good. The rest can have a new job at the other side of the car park.

I do feel sorry for the staff that knew they stuff.

[Rob Morley]

That people on the internet spout bollocks.

That is indeed how they work, at least in the supermarkets I frequent. When the peanut butter I used to buy switched from glass to plastic jars the system still expected the heavier item, and raised an error every time I scanned one for months after the change.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I think all the Maplin stores I visited in recent years have now closed. Guildford was the first I knew closed, when their stock suddenly boosted the shelves of my local Maplin. Farnborough and Bracknell closed a couple of weeks ago. Reading last week. Noticed Luton is closed. I meant to check the Canary Wharf one when I was at a client's office on Monday, but I forgot.

[John Rumm]

A friend of mine had a part time job in the lakeside store. He said recently the warehouse people were basically sending out any crap they could to branches to get shot of it. But say they happened to have 5000 scart leads, rather than send some to each shop, they would just send the entire stock to one shop to shift! He said they were deluged with bulk consignments of the kind of thing they might usually expect to sell a few a month of.

[Brian Gaff]

With hindsight, which as we all know is a wonderful thing, it was a real mistake to go high street retail to such an extent, as in the old days when they were just a single warehouse converting to on line would have been relatively cheap. The lack of foot fall on the highstreet and the rise of the cheap Chinese internet sources, when you consider the rates for a high street shop these days made the whole thing untenable unless you could increase your turnover and profit. Brian

[Huge]

[32 lines snipped]

After all, why bust a gut when you're about to lose your job anyway?

[alan_m]

I see that Dixons/PCWorld/Carphone has had a substantial drop in profits. Having seen first hand the staff's frustration with the point of sales software and their procedures when dealing with customers I'm not surprised.

I also suspect that Argos will be in trouble if they cannot sort out their stock control software and be able to tell customers where and when a missing ordered item can be obtained.

[tabbypurr]

they also won't get something from another store that has sold out locally.

NT

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

down the drain just like maplin airport home of London's third airport...

[Andy Burns]

Leicester one has. You'd think the administrators could have kept the website running, if just to show which shops (if any) are still open?

[David Williams]

I was in a Maplin store in Cambridge on Friday 15th June, which was its penultimate day. (This was in a retail park, but still in town. The true high-street shop in the town centre closed about two weeks earlier, as did one in Bedford.)

I had a short chat with somebody from the administration team, who said that it would be the last store to close, on the 16th. Any advance on that?

-

When not chatting, he was telling the regular shop staff how to package lucky dip bags. At that stage, his advice seemed to be to put an entire bay of stock into a bin bag - 50 phono-phono leads, anyone?

I missed the last day, but saw the skip - no obvious stock, just office and kitchen stuff, and some display banners. Oh, and half a dozen bottles empty of bubble and smoke fluid. I hope they had a good closing party.

[alan_m]

That was a non-starter from day one. If not cancelled they would still be digging up un-exploded ordinance today.

[Vir Campestris]

I think they're in trouble anyway. Why go to a shop and look in a paper catalogue when you can look online and have it delivered?

Andy

[Andrew Gabriel]

Reading one was 16th too - I don't know any open after that.

Yes that was stupid - all the stores did that. Who the hell wants to buy a bag of 200 8.2 ohm resistors.

Farnborough one had bags of mixed cable reels for £1 each on the last day.

[Bob Eager]

I get quite a lot of stuff from Argos. Usually stuff I need in a hurry - order and have it delivered the same day.

[Max Demian]

You can do that with Argos too. Same/next day delivery is £3.95 regardless of how many items in most cases. Or reserve online and pick it up yourself if you don't want to wait. I expect they'll give up the paper catalogue some time, though it's handy to browse.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I buy resistors by the hundred. Rapid were selling the 0.6w metal oxide type I like for about 1p each by the 100. Maplin at about the same time were charging 35p each. One reason I stopped using them. ;-)