Just been into a Maplin store and it's just the same as ever; about seven sales people standing around doing nowt, a couple of customers looking around and a lot of valuable stock. My son priced up a 1 x 4GB stick of Corsair RAM and found it at £45 but reckoned he can get the same from Scan Computers for £18. Doesn't everybody buy stuff like that online nowadays anyway?
So will Maplin be the next retail failure?
The price is for convenience. They don't have much stock but its incredibly handy for need it now stuff.
WH Smith's will go first. I'm only basing this on the fact I got Blockbuster spot on though.
They are handy for niche products.
I built some 12" disco / speaker cabinets a fair few years ago, I don't know why, but that stuff fascinates me so it was project on! bought a fair few bits, cab corners, ports and terminal plates.. A few other bits and bobs..
It'd be a shame to see them go under as they have lots of cool stuff for the DIY audio/electronic enthusiast.. But I can see your point.. How many people build thier own speakers these days when it's barely any more expensive to just buy an off the shelf product.
Handy for lots of small bits and pieces, ie plugs, cables, electronic components. You can get it cheaper online, but not really worth it if you have to pay several £ for postage. Plus as cbike says, handy if you need it quickly.
Maybe Maplin will get taken over by Currys/PC World?
They've not been the same since Ted Bovis passed away...
Global ti , defo a goner the one up here is badly merchandised and the staff turn their backs on you when you walk in ...or I stink !!!!
So will Maplin be the next retail failure?
Maplin has always been a retail failure. 2016 should be the year someone realises this and puts the moribund place out of its misery.
Strange shop - sub Woolworth tat and electronic bits and bobs. Which I can now get as quick online from any number of stores. Dead, dead, dead.
Bargain Booze opened up here a few months back, always completely dead. Hope it doesn't shut, as they actually have a decent range of good beers.
Maplin's weird- they actually have stuff that they can sell, but half their shelves seem to be loaded with stuff they couldn't sell in 2010 but don't want to discount in 2015. The PC components section in particular, my local shop has a Q6600 processor from 2007 on the shelf for £150 😯
Haha, I'm still rocking a q6600, quality processor! Had it about 6 years! But you can buy better ones now obviously for much less than that!
They do seem to have silly stock at outrageous prices.
It wouldn't be a surprise when you think how radio shack failed in the USA.
IIRC it owned by the same people who own Pizza Hut and Bernard Matthews.
I love Maplin for my silly electrical projects, but the shop is full of tat. I loved it when it was staffed by geeks who could answer questions, and was basically a trade counter with knowledgable staff. Last time i went in i wanted a double stack 250/500k pot for a volume in my early 70's hifi. The assistant arrived on one of those hover board things, asked a few questions and then showed me to the push on knobs.
I hope they don't shut because i'm in there at least twice a month, but they need to sell less tat and more weird specialist stuff from smaller shops.
My local Maplin is great, I got a good deal on a 144Hz monitor and since then get sent vouchers. The one in Nov & Dec have been things like £50 off £100 which has been used for new HDD & SSD's saving aprrox £40 compared to Scan or Dabs.
They do need to sort their wensite out - the search and refinements is basic and reminds me of stuff from over 10 years ago.
they are ok, I need them for bits and bobs that im not sure what it looks or kind like... everytime I go there it feels like I go back in time..same with argos..fells like I am back in year 2005 ..shops looks old and tired.. needs someone to sort it out maybe change colour and some really good marketing strategist people
I like Maplin but agree with many of the comments so far about tat. The branches in London have saved me wasted days when I need a particular tool, cable or connector to complete a job.
Would be a shame if they went under but no great surprise.
I hope Maplin will remain in business coz they sell items not easy to find sometimes when you need them. 😀
Maplin is handy but I do wonder how they keep going. The few bits and bobs I buy won't save them.
Between them and Holland and Barrett I reckon.
Rubber_Buccaneer - MemberMaplin is handy but I do wonder how they keep going. The few bits and bobs I buy won't save them.
Between them and Holland and Barrett I reckon.
Maplin might need to change a bit of their strategy by focusing on items they can sell a bit more.
Holland & Barrett will survive.
i work for holland and barrett before, trust me when i say they are not easy to go down.
Yeh I can see them going the same way as Tandy if any ones old enough to remember them!
Bought my first mobile phone from them, a Motorola the size of a hiking boot!
How the sale went down
The private equity people walked into the room - at which point all the Maplin staff execs scarpered out of sight. When they did reappear, they were unable to answer the most basic questions about the business, merely reading out what was written about it in the catalogue. They also refused, point blank, to make eye contact.
When the P/E execs made their offer to buy the outfit, they got the response "sorry, we don't have one in stock at the moment, but if you come back next week, we'll order one for you - but in the mean time, would you like a radio-controlled toy with lots of flashing lights".
Luckily, the P/E guys were too savvy to fall for the Maplin teams offer of buying an extended warranty with the company (no, you don't get your money back if the company turns out to be broken), but they did buy an extra set of batteries for a bargain £5 million.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/06/27/maplin_rutland/
I reckon Holland and Barrett make 90% of their money in Jan selling placebos and snake oil to Resolutionists.
WH Smith made £114m in 2014, they make a lot of thier money from their 'transport' shops - train stations, airports and service stations but they still make £50m a year from the 'High Street' - but even then they like a captive audience - hospitals and such.
We go to Maplin sometimes for work (it support) but they really are the last chance saloon for us - over priced tat in the main. They sell SD cards like its 2009 I swear they charge more per GB than Apple.
If I was going to pick a retailer for the scrap pile it would be B&Q, they've already closed 60 stores and they've lost thier place in the market - IKEA sell better bathrooms and kitchens for less and the higher end places sell much better stuff for not much more - the rest of thier lines are over priced compared with Skewfix who really push to the home user now. Their stores seem run down and dirty these days, they've stopped trying to employ older people and/or former tradesmen - now they're just the same young under employed people who you see in any other retail place.
You can't compare them to Screwfix, as they are the same company.
Are RS tools and terralec still going?
I imagine it's tough to compete when you have to pay tax and have premises and pay staff.
My mum used to work for maplin as a manager and is still in touch with one of the directors who said this month its on the verge of going under. New owners have essentially made it worse than it was before.
A new maplin store opened in perth earlier this year - bizarre!
It'll be a sad day for me if Maplin go under. Hopefully they can continue to support their business by selling tat to halfwits so that the geeks still have somewhere to go for a bag of resistors.
hmmm - adding a disk to my nas and other plans cancelled, I went into Maplin to see if they had the right disk. Yes, and not stupidly overpriced - a bit more than ebuyer but not much. Mentioned that, a quick google by salesboy (no prompting on my part) and they price matched with no postage costs.
They're also offering celestion skymaster 20x80 astro binoculars pick up from store for the 2nd cheapest price on the net.
Staffed by muppets though
I ordered some bits to pick up in store a couple of years ago. This included a few meters of a particular type of wire. The ordering was fine and popped into the store later to pick it up. then it got very weird as the manager had a right go at me for ordering the wire. "You can't order lengths of wire like that" he kept yelling at me. In the end, after explaining, many times, that I clearly could, 'cos I did, I just walked out. What a massive bell end
Awful shop that looks like it's been going bust since circa 1995. Radioshack in the states was much better and they still went to the wall.
If you have a trade account then RS is the place to go.
Don't go there for PC stuff, clearly. They only sell it like PC world do - for people who either need it now, or have no idea what they are buying.
It's a great place for electrical bits and pieces, and also electronic kits for learning, they do raspberry pi stuff, lots of niche stuff... also very good for a wide variety of tools verging on the obscure you can't get elsewhere on the high st. I bought a set of 'probes' there a while ago - tiny needly points and hooks with handles - incredibly useful. And it's local.
Our shop is often busy, lots of people in there with a broken appliance or something that they are looking to fix.
Poped in the other day to get a project box, opted not to get the 12V psu and PWM controller as they were hugely expensive compared to the £5 or so you can get them online, will see if components from china are as bad as the chargers.
It will be sad to see them go if they do as they are the first not place to buy electronic components without waiting for postage. I think electronics as a hobby is bigger now than when I was young but the shop needs to sell other items to the general public as well.
Maplins always want you to buy extra high priced batteries, when you buy anything, and some stores need to send to staff on customer recognisation courses, walk in and they all walk away, unless you want to buy batteries.
How they went from Holiday camps to electronics is surprising, HI DE HI,
WWW.CPC.CO.UK IS better for stuff and free delivery
Poped in the other day to get a project box
Maplin sell pope-mobiles?
Vatican funded, they're stable.
My son priced up a 1 x 4GB stick of Corsair RAM and found it at £45 but reckoned he can get the same from Scan Computers for £18.
You could argue that this shows healthy margins for those who want i now or don't shop online
[quote=CraigW ]Handy for lots of small bits and pieces, ie plugs, cables, electronic components. You can get it cheaper online, but not really worth it if you have to pay several £ for postage.
Sorry Maplin, but delivery is now free from all the major suppliers, with next day from Farnell and RS
http://cpc.farnell.com/help-delivery-information
http://uk.farnell.com/help-delivery-information
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=services/delivery-methods
I occasionally buy toy stuff from Maplin, but that's about it - though I suspect that they're probably surviving on selling to people who don't know better where to get stuff and pay their high margins.
I saw a woman in Maplins once.
I saw a woman in Maplins once.
She'd have been cheaper online.
(sorry)
[quote=molgrips ]It's a great place for electrical bits and pieces, and also electronic kits for learning, they do raspberry pi stuff
The RPi stuff I saw in there was hugely over-priced - but then most resold RPi stuff seems to be. Tools are admittedly decent value, but I now have a Screwfix which is far more convenient to get to if I want something now.