Credit insurance tightens for geek shack Maplin Electronics Credit insurers are cutting their exposure to geek emporium Maplin Electronics amid some reports of declining profit and wider concerns about old-school retailing. Trade indemnifier QBE slashed available cover on Maplin by more than 80 per cent in September and has just removed the limit completely, meaning distributors will …
Personally... let them fold. The jobs will go elsewhere (warehouse packings, shippers, delivery staff, telesales etc.) rather than disappear entirely.
Then maybe the high-streets will die back. And we can have restaurants etc. again, or 24 hour shopping centres. And all the rest can be turned back into the housing it once was.
Many things annoy me about modern life but being able to walk into a shop after work, or phone up a company when I get home, or pick up my parcels sometime outside 9.01am-4:59pm Mon-Fri.... that's quite nice. But how many shops do I need? Not many. Just the basics. Everything else I can schedule and have brought to me when I choose... that's called progress. For the last 10-15 years I've done all my Christmas shopping online. God, I'd HATE doing Christmas shopping in an actual line of shops... do people still do that?
And if we're not using them, then they can't survive, so why bother to try? What are you going to do, subsidise the high-street? Sell it off, use it as housing, then you might have people who actually live in these fake city-centres rather than just shop there during the day and get drunk of an evening.
24-hour services.
A place to park (hey, if only there were a big Maplin store we could convert into a car park or resident parking?).
Home delivery.
Cheaper and more convenient purchases.
Seems like a no-brainer to me. And judging by most town centres, nobody is going to lament the loss of those huge pedestrianised areas dedicated to Marks & Spencer and/or regurgitating kebabs.
Hell, build a ginormous post-office, a 24 hour supermarket, an Amazon dropbox thing, a petrol station, a pharmacy (could all be same place for all I care) and convert the rest into housing. Done. Don't even need a bank nowadays - totally pointless in the modern era anyway. 14 estate agents in the same street, though. And lots of gambling dens, just lately - I imagine the licensing laws have been relaxed because it's that or empty shops. Usually there are more estate agents than places for rent in or near that street, in fact, which I find ironic.
Hell, my road has no less than 4 pharmacies and it's only a tiny back road. I honestly can't work that one out.
I just hope that the incomparable convenience and customer service of online ordering will kill off all such places, and maybe then we'll get towns again. Rather than the same ten shops in a row, and a bank with no staff.
Our kids are going to think that actually going into a shop is "quaint" and a novelty by the time they're my age. I can't say that I would fight for them to have access to such things. A library, yes, but we closed those all down because they aren't profitable "and the internet".
Town pubs are dying off.
Post offices are dead.
Most conventional shops are dead.
Banks are gutted shells now.
But my shopping arrives tonight, and I can't say I begrudge the poor guy the £3 delivery charge for saving me half-an-hour's drive, an hour pissing about with a trolley, then several re-packs of my groceries to the till, to the car, to my house, to the cupboards, and not having to contend with a single queue or idiot who can't remember their PIN or wants to hold up the queue while they go back for a different bottle of bleach.
If we could just kill off ticket offices at rail stations and turn them into parcel-collection points, I'll be a happy man, and I don't even take the train any more.
"And lots of gambling dens, just lately - I imagine the licensing laws have been relaxed because it's that or empty shops."
That's because the most profitable part of a betting shop is the fixed odds betting terminal (computer roulette). There is a massive usage of them by a combination of gambling addicts and people laundering money. To curb this, they are limited to a set number (4 IIRC) per shop. So it's profitable to open a second shop next to the current one, just for the FOBT.
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"Gambling dens... I imagine the licensing laws have been relaxed because it's that or empty shops. "
Nope.
Paradoxically it's because the laws were tightened to only allow 2-3 fixed odds machines in each premises. The parasitical things are so fantastically profitable that if William Hill et al could put 5 completely shops in a row along the street, they'd do it. Various local authorities have been trying to stop the spread of betting shops and found that they can't use "there are already too many" as a reason.
In the meantime people who can't afford to spend money pump what they don't have into the machines in the hopes of a mega payout which is simply what all the other suckers put into it too, minus a scalping for Mr Hill and friends.
The overall average payout is about 87% of what goes in - but it's like having 10 apples, giving them all to 1 person in a group of 10 people and saying that on average they have one apple each.
Online sales in 2016 were only around13% of total sales. It’s footfall in the high street and management of costs that are the problem. There was a hefty increase in both people and premises costs in 2016 that needs to result in higher sales otherwise the debt becomes more difficult to service.
Maplin have gone out of their way to lose me as an avid customer over the years. I used to buy tons of electronic components off them in my youth, the days of the catalogues (with sci-fi covers) and no internet. All until the day when they were out of stock of one of the items I ordered, which brought the size of my order below the minimum needed for free delivery, so they deducted a delivery charge too which meant they also removed more items from my order as the cheque no longer covered everything. Didn't buy anything off them for years after that.
Recently tried to buy some specialist cable from their website, but when I added it to my basket it insisted that I select my local Maplin store rather than allowing me to purchase it mail order. Bizarre. As the nearest Maplin store is some ten miles away I abandoned my order and purchased the cable from CPC instead.
Indeed.
"Reg readers are fond of "Maplins" as one of the few remaining outlets that allows electronics hobbyists to browse legacy components, cables, semiconducters, graphics cards and motherboards while scouting out the latest drones, 3D printers and more. Compared to Dixons Carphone and other old-world retailers, Maplin still has a reputation for customer service."
(Concerning the bit I put in bold.) Well, yes, I suppose that's correct - but in that vein, one could also say "Compared to the box containing a warm dog turd on a spring, the mismatched, extra small, white nylon socks were a tasteful and much appreciated gift."
I didn't even use them that much, but my last experience was typical - needed a USB micro SD card reader that hour, shop assistant tried to sell me something about £15 saying that was "...as cheap as that sort of thing gets" but on the exact same rack there was a tiny one that cost £8.something. Yeah, they're circling the drain.
@S4qFBxkFFg:needed a USB micro SD card reader that hour, shop assistant tried to sell me something about £15 saying that was "...as cheap as that sort of thing gets"
What a pisstake.
Maplin must not know that you can buy card readers and related tat in Poundland or Poundstretcher.
one could also say "Compared to the box containing a warm dog turd on a spring, the mismatched, extra small, white nylon socks were a tasteful and much appreciated gift."
You bastard! You total f***ing bastard! I've just spewed a gobfull of decent red wine all over my Chromebook because of you. I'm not happy with the loss of the wine, and the Chromebook's looking a bit sorry too. Bastard.
Went to Maplin recently to pick-up a SPST toggle switch, only to find all the component hobbyist items have been removed from the shop floor.
Presumably, this is to make way for high margin smart home stuff.
Later added said switch to an order from a Raspberry Pi reseller whilst buying a stack of other stuff that Maplin simply don't sell.
They've missed a trick in not being the go-to high street RPi supplier and educator.
I'm sure high street retail space is expensive, but stores risk losing otherwise loyal customers if they hide all the boring but essential items away in the basement.
In my local Maplin they have put them in drawers. Apparently hidden but they are still there.
The component desk is the best bit about Maplin though, it's the only place you can find individual components in a hurry, and at not too bad prices (for a hobbyist low volume kind of thing).
Totally agree with the comments about cable pricing etc. It would be a shame if the high prices forced them to disappear, losing the source of components.
I wish they'd stuck with that, and maybe tools, cables and things (though without the markup that makes them ridiculous - I've just noticed they have a 'maplin essentials' range which seems not unreasonable, but not really seen it in shops, it's the impression of £20 HDMI cables that's stuck). The things that always puzzled me were, 1. as someone has pointed out, they would stock computer gear which gets outdated fairly rapidly (motherboards and the like) and never discount it, so you would find last generation stock still priced at its release price, 2. the various electronic gear (microphones and things) which were generally low end consumer grade but also priced up a bit too far.
High street prices for flash memory / USB sticks are an interesting case study in electronics pricing, supermarkets and Rymans currently sell a bit better than 2GB/£ (cheap enough I never buy them online and have sometimes just picked them up because they have them), while Boots and Maplin both < 1GB/£.
But often, the component desk has less than half-a dozen of each component. I went in to get some capacitors to do an emergency rebuild of a TV power supply, and whilst they had most of them, I ended up buying their complete stock of a couple of the values I needed, and they did not have any of one of them. I ended up having to buy two of the 1/2 value capacitors, and wire them in parallel until I could get the correct one.
If you had a complete project, I would doubt that you would get all of the parts in one visit.
I used to love browsing Maplin and other electronic stores looking at components. Now Maplins just seems to offer high-street type products like drones, H-Fi, computer accessories and other consumer stuff. Browsing their store takes 30 seconds nowadays rather than half an hour. I did email my "local" store a while ago asking if they'd got a particular component in stock, but never got a reply, so I bought elsewhere. As I mentioned in a post above, Maplins have gone out of their way to lose me as a customer one way or another.
When I was a kid you could go into a hardware store and buy everything you needed to make (say) a go-cart.Now the only way to make a go-cart is to buy one and hope you can take it apart - you wont be able to without breaking some irreplaceable part.
When I was a kid you could pop into the local electrical store and buy everything to make a radio except the marquetry fascia which you could get from the hardware store or toy shop.
I have looked at getting involved in maker spaces and things and making a raspberry pi controlled on-line conveyor belt thingy for filling orders for small projects so the cheapest way to make stuff is not to deconstruct flow-soldered equipment.
No idea about Maplins, but here in the USA RadioShack was big and they folded their DiY stock nearly 20 years ago. They still exist mainly by selling cell phones, but the writing is on the wall.
These stores are just past consumer interest and are pushing ibto niche. Candle makers, paper printing pressers, buggy carpenters and even disco* are just some of many that have passed.
*I would argue that disco never died, it just mutates to survive. However, how you mutate HDMi cables and similar crap is beyond me... but Maplins best get dancin'!
Tandy were here too, they franchised into existing independent electronics outlets that did TV repair. I could pick up a Tandy catalogue and they would order the stuff in for me.
But Maplin was an annual thing, their catalogue would show up in the newsagents and I got it on day one and geeked out on the mini datasheets for early IC packages and transistors. Then to order you would fill a form cut out of the last page of the book with product codes, mail it off, and they would send you your next order form with your delivery.
"Over here we had Tandy (same as radioshack)"
FYI, Tandy was the original name and parent of RadioShack. The Tandy Leather Corporation or some such name and is the T in TRS-80 computer range. The original did shoe leather then moved into the hobbyist leathercraft market and then other craft markets. RadioShack was just another hobbyist market and not such a great shift really. Selling the stuff people want to make things with.
Some things wildly overpriced, others quite reasonable. I wouldn't quite say they haven't moved with the times - they practically deluge my mailbox with offers, and frankly not everyone wants to go into an electronics store.
Last purchase was this https://www.maplin.co.uk/p/worldwide-60w-acdc-multi-voltage-power-supply-l11bq
4A, multi voltage switchable supply. I looked at other places but the quality seemed variable elsewhere..
Mind you, I'm in the market for a soldering iron that can solder wires onto a surface mount EPROM. Have to see if I'm going to Maplin or Ebay for a decent model, as I'm not sure if my 25W standard tip iron is the best option to prevent destroying a 140 quid of graphics card..
I still have my old Weller TCP with a varied selection of bits (both size and temperature). Only thing I need more oomph for I used a RS Butane soldering iron which even works well in windy outdoor situations.
Was quite an expense when I bought them but over the years any regret has been well and truly beaten down.
I think the amended title clarifies things. I take no pleasure in saying it, when the company is clearly circling the drain, but this fate has been an obvious inevitability for years. Our local Maplin is always empty when I drop in, too often (as others have already said) the products are inferior quality, out of stock, or obscenely over-priced.
Some Maplin stores do quite well I suspect, the one on Manchester Oxford Road has a large student catchment area, and other people who need something electronic now - especially power supplies, cables and suchlike. It's usually got a few people in it.
They're always quite helpful, so I can only imagine this is what their target market appreciates. For pure supply of product on the high street Argos could probably wipe them out without a thought. Maplin are probably better at interconnecting stuff and getting things going again than anywhere else on the high street.
I will be sad to see them go, though, both for history and the fact that they occasionally have Weird Stuff in, or unpopular products priced low. Want to add Firewire or USB to your system? Various products are running cheaper than online, assuming you're near a store that has stock.
Another power supply (not a bad price), a bargain bin molex to SATA power for cabling, a 1.5m 4 pin Thinkpad Firewire to 6 pin Firewire cable (3 quid, but 3m is 24 quid. Hahahaha nope), and a labelling machine (decent cost). Not too bad providing you google to check things, the 1.5m cable they had to fetch from the back..
From my experience they sell quite a lot of items at better prices than Amazon or Currys, and they pay decent cashback rates and give out plenty of decent vouchers. I will miss them if they go, and so will everyone else here. Less choice = higher prices.
( ...and don't get me started on ebay tat... I remember laughing at my colleague who insisted £1 ebay hdmi cables were as good as any other because "they're all just digital connections". He ended up buying a mid-priced one like the rest of us )
Oh dear,.... last time I swerved by Maplin for a 'catalogue' it was a rather thin affair, a far cry from the Yellow Pages sized behemoth I could quite happily browse through with a mug of tea, musing on projects I'd never get around to.
I can't even find a recent .pdf on their web site, the one I found was dated 2015.
Browsing components isn't a great experience, just looked up some LEDs, the power output for some looks dubious, and the units are often duplicated, or mixed (one said 1w mWmW) clearly nobody faintly technical has vetted the web site. When I buy components I nee to be confident they are what they say they are,.... mixed messages and confused units really don't help.
And i bet the catalogue's gone up to over a fiver now too
Worked their while i was at uni, all the staff there then had atleast some related qualification, but the prices for anything other than components were extorsion, even with staff discount (that varied by product)
I'll miss the place when its gone, but its been fighting obsolecence since I worked there (2000ish) and quite frankly cash means nowt if your bottom line is all red.
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