Re: Remnant of the 1980s
My thoughts exactly, like various other dinosaur companies they refused to see change coming
Well, all the investors who've sold Maplin over the past few decades (of which there are several) saw the change coming. Most, I suspect, didn't even intend to disrupt or try adapting - all they hoped was to run the company long enough to find a greater fool willing to buy it. It hasn't been conspicuously successful, but whilst PWC work their evil work, along came Edinburgh Woollen Mill, purveyors of the finest faux-Scottish tat to Japanese and American tourists.
EWM is of course where retail brands go AFTER they've died - Austin Reed, Jaeger, Peacocks, even bits of long forgotten gone-bust outfits like Rosebys and Jane Norman. I'm surprised they didn't snap up BHS, although I suppose they're waiting for Debenhams or House of Fraser to shuffle off their retail coil, or perhaps more in keeping with their previous purchases, Laura Ashley. Maybe they can keep open the Maplin stores in Windsor, Stratford Upon Avon, and Bicester "Shopping Village", and offer VAT free sales to long haul tourists? Get the Chinese manufacturers to screenprint a Union Jack on all the merchandise, and it'll fly off the shelves.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
