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Maplin 50% closing down (UK)

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granddad

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Although Maplin ( UK) sort of gave up on the hobbiest component market decades ago,they were a good 'Emergency part' supply ... now its ending... My local store has a 50% ( up to ) sale , I had a look . even at 20 or 30 % off their stuff is expensive, but i did pick up a IDE to SATA adaptor ( UNITEK ) for 6 GBP .. 15 on the shelf ?
 
Their prices have been pants-round-yer-ankles for as long as I can remember - that has never been a situation which is conducive to retaining a customer.
In recent years - walk in the door to multiple pumping stereos, manned by a couple of kids and a manager who doesn't know what a diode is, let alone a zener.
Sad to say I am not surprised they are where they are now, but they were handy when in a pinch...
 
I was wondering if my collection of Maplin ' Electronics' magazine and 1970/80's catalogues is now worth a fortune :joyful:
 
A tip, my mate in Devon has a maplin near them. He walked in and picked loads up and took it to the till, they scanned it and gave a price, he asked to see the manager and said I will give you X amount (it was about 20% of the actual value!! so £20 for every £100 the till said), they are in liquidation and while they must try and get the best value by law, they are under time pressure as receivers cost alot of money per day.

So shareholder pressure means they want it done quick, it worked for my mate who is a receiver BTW, maybe go give it a try. Maplin went bust because no one pays £1 for a Led worth 1p for 10 anymore.
 
Watch Farnels price and value. rumor is Element14 is in trouble.
 
These same thoughts were said when Radio Shack went out. Almost on one buys diodes, resistors and transistors.

These things are not tough in school. In the 1970s in Canada we had 3 years of (electronics/camera/auto repair) in high school. In the late 1960s the TV repair shop sold parts. I lived in a town of 2000, 3 hours drive to any where, and you can not believe how many HAM radios there were. They all died of old age and were not replaced.
 
Buying 5 resistors or an LED or 2 for a buck just doesn't work.

I thought Radio Shack finally got it when the started selling parts "kits", but if you added up was was in the kits, it was almost no savings over the individual kits. If they had bought some of the assortments from ebay and not marked them up too much, they might have had something. I would pay a reasonable markup to have a lot of ebay stuff today rather than in a month.

Radio Shack still sends out email as if they are a going concern; even at 50% off, most of their prices are outrageous.

I don't know how many CR2032 batteries they had stockpiled when they went under! They've been selling them by the box in email every week. At 50 cents a piece by the box, that's actually not a bad deal.
 
You understand a mark up in retail outlets, but the evidence is 'they' get greedy... Maplin would sell a CR2032 at around 2 GBP each... I used to run a little 'shop' at our allotments , one year I lashed out and bought 1000 x 9cm plant pots cost less than 1 pence each.. I saw same thing in shops 10 for 2.50 GBP ...
 
Selling electronics components would be a tough business to be in, especially if you want every item hanging on a peg. If you're selling resistors in a 5-pack, there's going to be pressure to limit the selection to as few values as possible A kit of a humdred or two hundred values could have solved the problem.

Think of the number of microcontrollers and ICs there are; picking the 20 "best" to hang on pegs is bound to fail.
 
Maplin was big in the mail order components at one time.. presumably everything came from a central warehouse , but yes stocking and selling electronic components from local (100 odd ) shops is bound to fail ... especially with the speed of change that technology has... We (the UK ) still have one or two small independent component retailers left , but their range is fairly static but reasonably priced, eg.. CR2032 at around 1GBP , I do miss browsing the 2 inch thick catalogues :angelic:
 
I remember years ago when the Allied Electronics catalog arrived. Going through page by page and being especially fascinated looking at all the MS connectors with so many different configurations.

Who knew years later I would be cursing those same connectors, trying to find a mate or finding out how easy it is the screw up the insertable pins?

There was and maybe still is a store here called "Connector World" who carroed all the bodies, pins, backshells and all the rest. They seemed to take great delight in failing to tell you that "the mate to this connector" that yoi just paid twenty bucks for doesn't come with pins, backshell, cable clamps, etc. When you got home and opened the package, all you had was the useless body of the connector.
 
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