[sdiy] Maplin folds

[Richard Wentk]

They ran out of credit to buy stock before Christmas, so they were already in a death spiral late last year. A £15m VAT bill killed them - which is impressive, considering the company was only worth about £80m max.

The new Maplin had very little in common with the 70s/80s Maplin. They’d been bounced between various companies with “Private Equity” and/or “Capital” in the name a few times since the days of Doug Simmons and the amazing catalogues.

The staff were always great. I had to take a battery charger back a couple of years ago, and they found the sale in their records from my card number, and handed over a replacement with no receipt and no fuss.

But the web site was always pretty bad, with poor item search and silly prices. You could check store stock, but if a local store didn’t have something there wasn’t any chance of this modern “We’ll make sure you get it tomorrow” nonsense.

RIP

R

> On 28 Feb 2018, at 14:22, Neil Johnson <neil.johnson71 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Maplin (UK electronics store, following the Tandy history) is closing down:
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43223175
> 
> For those with long memories this is quite sad, although anyone who
> had gone into a Maplin store in more recent times won't be surprised
> by this news.
> 
> Neil
> -- 
> http://www.njohnson.co.uk
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