Guitarist Guild: A Musical Community Beyond Strings
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mick on February 28, 2018, 09:38:16 PM
Electronics retailer Maplin (https://www.maplin.co.uk/) goes into administration, so where did it go so wrong.
While I have used them in the past just for bits and bobs, they never seem to be really good on their pricing compared to other retailers, especially with some of the online deals. Plus over the years some of the products including quite a lot of their own brand stuff has been of dubious quality IMO. It's sad to see them like this, they've been around for many years.
Some info here, should you not have seen it, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c2694zrn20yt/maplin-administration
They used to be very handy, after Tandy (Radio Shack) went bust. But as you say they lost their edge - pricing, quality and more importantly range. So I started buying components from CPC and on eBay by post. Sad to see another old retailer go to the wall, but times change and they didn't manage to keep up with them.
I'm a bit slow on this one, but I see now that Maplin is coming back, as it's recently been bought by Dragons Den celeb Peter Jones, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/13/dragons_den_badass_jones_buys_fallen_maplins_ip/
https://www.maplin.co.uk/
Always liked perusing the Maplin stores, but over the years it got to a point where the same old crap was being promoted, and as mentioned the pricing just wasn't good at all. Let's hope they can turn it around and make it work.