[sdiy] Maplin folds

[paula at synth.net]

a real shame, and also a shame that HMRC seemed happy to let Vodafone 
off their massive ax bill, but chose not to help these guys.

In fairness to them, they tried to cater for a changing market, people 
no longer build things these days, they are content with buying 
something. Buying things has also gotten a lot cheaper so again, no real 
surprises, but a shame none the less.

Paula

On 2018-02-28 14:53, Richard Wentk wrote:
> 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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