The business was sold to Rutland Partners for £85m in June 2014, a fraction of the £244m that fellow private equity house Montagu paid when it bought Maplin from hedge fund Graphene in 2011. Graphene had bought Maplin in 2001 for £42m so made a decent return on its investment.
So:
Bought by Graphene in 2001 for £42 mill. (A mangement buy-out by Maplin management).
Sold by Graphene to Montague in 2011 for £244 mill = £202 mill profit for Graphene.
Sold by Montague in 2014 to Rutland Partners for £85 mill = £159 mill loss by Montague.
Interesting to see its changing fortunes since its inception in a back bedroom and one shop at Westcliffe on Sea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maplin_Electronics
I wonder what will happen to its Far East operations, based in Shenzen, China, which handles more than 500 suppliers and 5,000 buying items for the parent company?
Maplin makes a heathy 48% gross profit on turnover, but it's frittered away by operating costs incurred by High St and out-of-town shops. 215 shops, 2,500 staff.
Just unsustainable.
It remains to be seen if some asset stripper/venture capitalist or another does buy it after liquidation. I don’t think it will operate many, if any, shops – just an online presence like say Rapid Electronics, which - in 2012, became part of the Conrad Group, a pan-European electronics retailer which seems to be doing very well. In 2015 and 2017 the company was shortlisted for the Distributor of the Year at the Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards.
As much as anything, Maplin is trying to cater for a market that hardly exists and is well catered for online by outfits with lower operating costs and hence, lower prices.
Today’s generation has neither the time nor inclination for ‘hobbies’ – only ‘pastimes’ - things in which they take a fickle and fleeting interest, rather than being in it for the long haul. Not just our hobby – all hobbies. No-one has a 9 – 5 job any more, and for maybe 20 years, since internet took a hold, and ‘social media’ – Facebook, Snapchat, twitter, what’s app etc, along with smart-phones, gobbles up what little free time people might otherwise have had.
Heck people can’t even go out for a meal without taking a photo of what’s on their plate and uploading it to Facebook, and can’t go to the cinema or a concert without fiddling with their phones. Far too busy taking a pic of a plate of lukewarm spaghetti at Pizza Express or whatever and bunging it on Facebook. They're not going to start building a model steam engine or a doll's house or start tinkering with electronics in a garden shed any time soon.
It’s a miracle that Maplin have lasted as long as they have when considering other firms who are long gone but were once major players with full page ads in magazines that have also folded, (except EPE, which is a clone of Slicon Chip in Oz). Ambit/Cirkit, Home Radio, Electroniques, Watford Electronics, Electrovalue, Bonex…
Quite remarkable that in Oz, despite a population only a third of GB, Jaycar, along with Silicon Chip, have bucked the trend and seem to thrive.
Nothing will change.
'What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare'...