[sdiy] Maplin folds

[Tim Ressel]

One of the hardest things for me to deal with is the fact that all 
things end. Very difficult. Going home for the holidays and seeing all 
you old haunts paved over with strip malls and apartment is really hard. 
Having your favorite surplus house, a place you spent endless hours 
looking through, dry up and blow away is crushing. There was a surplus 
place here in Portland called Wacky Willy's that closed. I spent a lot 
of time there. Not easy to deal with its closing. Its like losing a friend.

But this is life. Maybe we can hold an online wake for Maplin.

-timbo

On 2/28/2018 5:20 PM, Guy Taylor wrote:
> thats a shame :(
> I lived in England when I was a kid, and I remember getting the 
> near-phone-book-sized maplin catalogs.
> They are what got me so into electronics and why I am building synth 
> stuff today!!
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 10:37 AM, Nicholas Keller 
> <nirokeforums at gmail.com <mailto:nirokeforums at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     RadioShack was the same here.  Way overpriced...I would only buy
>     there when I needed a part that same day as the only other
>     small-quantity retail shop in the area (Chester's) closed their
>     doors a few years ago.
>
>     There used to be a dozen RadioShacks within a  ten mile radius
>     from my house, but last I checked, the closest was 80 miles away. 
>     That's likely closed now as well.
>
>
>     On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 6:15 PM Richie Burnett
>     <rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk
>     <mailto:rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk>> wrote:
>
>         Another one here shocked to see Maplin go.  Last time I was in
>         the local
>         store they had loads of Arduino and Raspberry Pi stuff in
>         there, along with
>         table-top robots, quad-copters, and all the usual disco
>         lights, speakers,
>         amps, etc.  I was amazed to see that they still had a tiny little
>         "Components" counter at the back of the store, but my jaw
>         nearly hit the
>         floor when I saw the prices for basic resistors, capacitors,
>         LEDs, etc!!!  I
>         think they wanted to charge me something like 5 quid for a
>         plastic IDC tool
>         (for fixing some telephone extension wiring,) that was clearly
>         a 2 pence
>         moulded plastic piece of Chinese crap.
>
>         -Richie,
>
>
>
>         -----Original Message-----
>         From: Jay Vaughan
>         Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 8:07 PM
>         To: SDIY List
>         Subject: Re: [sdiy] Maplin folds
>
>         > 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
>
>         It always bugs me that these part-shacks go out of business,
>         but yet the
>         Maker scene is expanding in leaps and bounds.  It seems to me
>         that its just
>         a matter of not having the right/savvy generation in charge of
>         new product
>         and market development in these dinosaurs.
>
>         Like, if Radioshack had just tuned into the 3D
>         printer/hackaday/rPi thing a
>         little sooner, it'd have had a pivot point to segue into the
>         Maker scene,
>         which - from my perspective - seems to be positively thriving:
>         The kids are
>         making stuff!  Perhaps the writing was on the wall already,
>         what with all
>         their over-leveraging on cheap crap from China and corporate
>         finance
>         dodginess, but .. maybe there's gonna be a brick-and-mortar
>         retailer rise
>         from all of this that caters to the demands of the maker scene.
>
>         Radio Shack used to be *the* doors-open hackerspace in many
>         communities.  I
>         know I learned a shit-ton of things in my youth by camping out
>         in the local
>         RS, booting up the demo TRS-80's, and coding away (same with
>         Computerworld,
>         anyone remember them?)  If they'd had a more
>         community-/DIY/maker oriented
>         open door policy, and actually .. I dunno .. hosted a few
>         events on a
>         regular basis, perhaps they'd have become a more viable force
>         for the scene?
>         One can dream ..
>
>
>         ;
>         --
>         Jay Vaughan
>         ibisum at gmail.com <mailto:ibisum at gmail.com>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
--Tim Ressel
Circuit Abbey
timr at circuitabbey.com

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