Maplin administration

[Butler Henderson]

Maybe they did have 4 diodes in stock and someone bought the other 2. Certainly stock has been a joke for some time - tried to buy some cable in pretty standard colours (grey and orange) a while back as I was trying to finish off some wiring that day and they no longer stocked one of the colours! Off topic but Argos seems equally low on stock with the more expensive items very thinly spread around a few stores and I wonder if Sainsburys have made a bit a blunder, especially as I have found items sat on the Sainsbury own shelves at a lower price. That could end up as a far bigger car crash.

[melmerby]

Who remembers Tandy. Maplins in effect took over the market they had , but wheras Tandy used small stores, Maplins used big stores.

Tandy didn't go bust they were sitting on a nice property portfolio which was more attractive than the business itself.

Carphone Warehouse bought the shops just to get the retail sites. Some Tandy stores were just as big as Maplins and generally in the same sort of retail areas.

I used to like the special offers and bargain bins which had some very cheap offers.

Maplin however started getting larger stores such as the one in Carlilse which was huge but only ever had enough stock to fill half the floor area, so it was spread rather thinly.

 

Tandy today:

https://www.tandyonline.com/

Check the prices. They make Maplin look really expensive

 

Tandy as some may know was originally the UK arm of Radio Shack, which name was already taken in the UK (an electronics store in London) so the name Tandy was used instead.

 

History here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Corporation

Keith

Edited March 16, 2018 by melmerby

[Oldddudders]

And before Tandy there was Lasky’s?

[rockershovel]

Quite so.

 

Personally I regard 'venture capitalists as scum (and aggressive city traders for whom a high share price is the be all and end all) that need to be regulated out of resistance. Time and time again venture capitalists come in and buy up struggling companies under the pretence of 'saving' them, only to load them up with unsustainable levels of debt.

 

Yes the rise of internet shopping etc may well have caused organisations like Maplin to shrink in size, but without the vast amounts of debit hanging round its net then I'm sure it could have continued trading in some form.

Hence the recent story in the Guardian, and probably other papers, about Unilever opting to site their Head Office in Rotterdam. It was dressed as the usual Brexit hysteria, but the fact is that Dutch law differs somewhat from U.K. law in that “shareholder value” is not the sole definition of acceptability, or otherwise of a buy-out. If you have a company with goodish, but not very exciting returns from a large asset portfolio, Netherlands is a good place to base yourself as a first defence against hostile takeovers by corporate raiders and asset-strippers.

 

I was working with a Dutch company at the time of the Rover Cars fiasco, when a government-endorsed asset-stripping operation so completely gutted the company that they literally did not own the name-plate on the gates, at the end. The Dutch chaps were astounded that this was legal, and were quite emphatic that it could not happen in Holland.

[rockershovel]

A propos Toys’r’us, the writing has been on the wall for some time. I went in the Peterborough one a couple of years ago for some reason and it seemed to be very largely committed to promotion of film merchandise. I just came away, having bought nothing.

 

Woolworths was like that, at the last. I went in the Peterborough one, really out of nostalgia, and it was rubbish. The store seemed to have no theme, no purpose, nothing to make you think “I must go to Woolies and get such-and-such”. There seems to be a critical point when stores become so focussed on expensive, high-mark-up stock with big advertising budgets paid by others, that they no longer serve their customers.

[stewartingram]

Without some supporting evidence I reckon this is too simplistic and gets in the way of a search for the real reason.  IMHO Maplin has been following the wrong path for a long time - much longer than your average VC would have patience with.

 

This business of having a standard stock level of 2 is something I have fallen foul of also. For small components like resistors and diodes it is plain stupid. The standard minimum stock level should be something like 50 or 100, or else don't sell them at all. After all 100 resistors costs about £1.

 

...R

That much !!?? I'm glad I don't shop where you do then.

 

Stewart

[Robin2]

That much !!?? I'm glad I don't shop where you do then.

You make my point very eloquently. 

 

...R

[melmerby]

And before Tandy there was Lasky’s?

More a hi-fi seller than components IIRC

Edgware Road & Tottenham Court Road - full of hi-fi, component and surplus shops.

We had a fair few in Hurst Street in Brum as well as a few others scattered around the city.

RSC was always good for hi-fi bits.

 

Keith

[Horsetan]

More a hi-fi seller than components IIRC

Edgware Road & Tottenham Court Road...

 

There was also a branch opposite Selfridges in Oxford Street in the 1970s.

[Oldddudders]

And before Tandy there was Lasky’s?

And before that there was Lisle Street, now part of Chinatown.

[Neal Ball]

Always a shame to see a company like Maplin to go under.... But honestly, when did you last go in and purchase?

 

I have several (too many) projects under way at the moment, none of the components have come from Maplins.

[Hroth]

More a hi-fi seller than components IIRC

Edgware Road & Tottenham Court Road - full of hi-fi, component and surplus shops.

We had a fair few in Hurst Street in Brum as well as a few others scattered around the city.

RSC was always good for hi-fi bits.

 

Keith

Looking at 50s copies of Radio Constructor, the adverts for Laskys were all for components and military surplus electronics. (Build a televisor for 15 Guineas! Plus valves...)

[ejstubbs]

I was reading that the U.S. side of Toys R Us was similarly bought by venture capitalists, loaded up with billions of debt (where does it come from?!?)

Where do you think the money comes from to buy the company? They don't put their *own* cash at risk!

[Butler Henderson]

Looking at 50s copies of Radio Constructor, the adverts for Laskys were all for components and military surplus electronics. (Build a televisor for 15 Guineas! Plus valves...)

Laskys were a hi fi shop as I remember them; like many businesses what they sold differed over time. I recall a electronics shop that existed once upon a time that was cheap and did not have extensive stocks of cheap poor quality products called Maplins.

[GeoffAlan]

I had an SD card fail in a camera while on holiday. Spotting a Maplins in the town we were visiting I popped in to buy a 64Gb hi-speed card. The price was gob-smacking! I bought their smallest slowest card and, once home, went on-line ti buy the 64Gb hi-speed card. For what Maplins wanted for one card I could have bought 4 online, including postage. Same make, same spec'. 

 

While we will all miss Maplins, that's why they went bust.

[rockershovel]

I had an SD card fail in a camera while on holiday. Spotting a Maplins in the town we were visiting I popped in to buy a 64Gb hi-speed card. The price was gob-smacking! I bought their smallest slowest card and, once home, went on-line ti buy the 64Gb hi-speed card. For what Maplins wanted for one card I could have bought 4 online, including postage. Same make, same spec'. 

 

While we will all miss Maplins, that's why they went bust.

I never did, at any time, believe that it was possible to run a major, developed-world economy by shifting boxes, flipping burgers and swindling each other in The City. The “service economy” was such obvious nonsense that I looked elsewhere, and never looked back. Nor did I believe the Conservative mantra that “it doesn’t matter who actually owns things”, which seems to beg the question of how in that case, it is possible to ever SELL anything to people who clearly believe otherwise..

[melmerby]

I had an SD card fail in a camera while on holiday. Spotting a Maplins in the town we were visiting I popped in to buy a 64Gb hi-speed card. The price was gob-smacking! I bought their smallest slowest card and, once home, went on-line ti buy the 64Gb hi-speed card. For what Maplins wanted for one card I could have bought 4 online, including postage. Same make, same spec'. 

 

While we will all miss Maplins, that's why they went bust.

I stocked up on SD cards when Aldi had some in.

Good quality and just as cheap as online.

 

Keith

[melmerby]

Laskys were a hi fi shop as I remember them; like many businesses what they sold differed over time. I recall a electronics shop that existed once upon a time that was cheap and did not have extensive stocks of cheap poor quality products called Maplins.

I assume they had been a "bitsa" shop but decided they would jump on the hi-fi craze and that's how they expanded.

Several of the local surplus shops in Birmingham did the same, morphed from bits in hi-fi.

 

One of these still exists:

https://goo.gl/maps/AoYHdFEcMmD2

 

Now into mainly DJ kit:

https://4dj.co.uk/about/

 

Last time I visited they didn't have anything for self builders

 

Keith

[railroadbill]

Maplins  were very useful for components like diodes, resistors, connectors, solder  etc where I could just go into the local branch and get them.  I bought an external hard drive from them as well  that was competitively priced.  But I also wanted a lead acid battery for a model boat that was about 3 times more expensive in Maplins than a specialist mail order supplier in Wales, so I got that from the specialist with other specialist bits. However, there have been 3 radio control model shops that have closed locally in  the last few years.

 

I buy SD cards on-line  from 7-dayshop.com (been using them since I used to buy film from them!)  They have been very reliable.

 

Can remember Laskys (and Tottenham Court Road used to have all sorts of electronic components shops once upon a time).  But now you can go on e-bay and buy all sorts of components direct from China, sent airmail in a jiffy bag....

 

Just remembered that there was a Tottenham Court Rd shop that sold electronic kits, and I once built a car radio from one of those. It actually worked fine. Now the circuitry would be all integrated chips.   Can't think of the name.  But radios, hi-fis  etc were proportionally more expensive then so building you own did save money.

 

 

 

 

 

ed for typos

Edited March 18, 2018 by railroadbill

[StevieD71]

Without some supporting evidence I reckon this is too simplistic and gets in the way of a search for the real reason.  IMHO Maplin has been following the wrong path for a long time - much longer than your average VC would have patience with.

 

This business of having a standard stock level of 2 is something I have fallen foul of also. For small components like resistors and diodes it is plain stupid. The standard minimum stock level should be something like 50 or 100, or else don't sell them at all. After all 100 resistors costs about £1.

 

...R

We have hundreds of different types of resistors in stock. No problems there!

[melmerby]

Maplins  were very useful for components like diodes, resistors, connectors, solder  etc where I could just go into the local branch and get them.  I bought an external hard drive from them as well  that was competitively priced.  But I also wanted a lead acid battery for a model boat that was about 3 times more expensive in Maplins than a specialist mail order supplier in Wales, so I got that from the specialist with other specialist bits. However, there have been 3 radio control model shops that have closed locally in  the last few years.

 

I buy SD cards on-line  from 7-dayshop.com (been using them since I used to buy film from them!)  They have been very reliable.

 

Can remember Laskys (and Tottenham Court Road used to have all sorts of electronic components shops once upon a time).  But now you can go on e-bay and buy all sorts of components direct from China, sent airmail in a jiffy bag....

 

Just remembered that there was a Tottenham Court Rd shop that sold electronic kits, and I once built a car radio from one of those. It actually worked fine. Now the circuitry would be all integrated chips.   Can't think of the name.  But radios, hi-fis  etc were proportionally more expensive then so building you own did save money.

 

 

 

 

 

ed for typos

There was a line of DIY transistor radios back then, made of surplus production parts.

Elegant 7 & Realistic 7 spring to mind. I made up a couple of them (one of each) One for an old lady which saved her pounds on a retail purchase and one for me. Mine was just a Perdio in a different case. I used it for years, it finally ending up in the shed.

 

Back then even some of the high street electrical shops sold a few DIY items such as turntables. I bought several over the years, BSR & Garrard and mounted them in my own cases.

 

Those days are long gone, modern electronics mainly consists of a few custom LSI chips on PCB and not much else. Generally no scope for DIY.

 

Keith

[Robin2]

We have hundreds of different types of resistors in stock. No problems there!

Do you have at least 50 of each type and resistance value?

 

...R

[Oldddudders]

Do you have at least 50 of each type and resistance value?

 

...R

And holding twice that number of every value and wattage would amount to less than £1k in stock value? I suspect that some FD-type at Maplin got his/her teeth into stock value and decreed no more than two of anything. Relevant to high-value/slow-moving items, sure, but insane for components. Understanding what your business does may no longer be a priority for such people.

[GeoffAlan]

There was a firm called, IIRC, Listers in Middlesbrough when I was a kid. They sold tools of all kinds, and as Dad was a foreman fitter and turner, and keen model maker, we often visited on a Saturday afternoon. If you asked for say a 1/8th drill they'd ask wood or steel and once they knew which you wanted, they'd pull out a drawer with several dozen drills, all 1/8th and all for the material you needed to drill.

If you wanted a pneumatic road drill, or 15 3/4" No8 wood screws, they had it in stock, with a choice of Japanned or plain in the case of the screws! Then old man Lister died and within a couple of years their stock levels fell and then their cry would be:- 'We can order it for you.'

Within 5 years they went bust as people realised that if they needed to order something they could pick up the phone and order it themselves.

The internet has revolutionised shopping, and no small physical shop can afford to hold the levels of stock that was feasible in the 1950s, unless they have a huge internet element to their business.

Maplins may well have survived by going for very few, very large out of town shops and relying on online shopping for their bread and butter.

[Bucoops]

And holding twice that number of every value and wattage would amount to less than £1k in stock value? I suspect that some FD-type at Maplin got his/her teeth into stock value and decreed no more than two of anything. Relevant to high-value/slow-moving items, sure, but insane for components. Understanding what your business does may no longer be a priority for such people.

 

I used to work for an electronics company. We used to use a specific motor controller that everything else was built around. It went obsolete so the company bought the entire global supply. Enough to build new machines for about 5 years and sufficient spares for existing machines.

 

A year later they took on a new purchasing and stock control manager. Trying to be keen it spotted that we had a huge stock of a part that we used relatively slowly so decided (without checking) to liquidise most of the stock to free up funds for other purchaes.

 

We then had to buy them all back when someone spotted it at grossly inflated prices...