Quote:
Originally Posted by richrussell
I think Maplin's failure to adapt to a changing demand and shopping culture has meant that it's been heading towards this point for some time.
|
That pretty much sums it up: truth is they're never going to get rich out of us hobbyist-types who might visit at most a couple of times a month to buy £7 of resistors/capacitors a banana-plug and a couple of BC108s. The cost of renting/heating/staffing a store - even in an out-of-town location - is really quite silly [not helped by recent increases in business-rates, minimum-wage, workplace-pensions etc] and to cover that you need a good turnover of high-profit high-value stuff.
RS, CPC, Farnell, Rapid, Mouser, Conrad, Digi-Key, all have a vastly better range of stuff, delivered quickly (a fiver for next-day courier delivery's fine by me - it's less than the cost of the Diesel it'd take me to drive to/from the nearest Maplin!).
I've also recently found Bitsbox -
https://www.bitsbox.co.uk/ - who have a reasonable collection of stuff.
It'll be sad to see Maplin go (or drastically downsize) but that's evolution: no business has an innate and enduring right to survive after all.