Thread: Maplin stores
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Old 9th Mar 2018, 10:28 pm   #262
IanBland
Hexode
 
Join Date: May 2015
Location: Northampton, Northants, UK.
Posts: 380
Default Re: Maplin stores

I don't agree with them shifting online. They simply do not have any merit in that regard; there are the Farnells and RS for serious purchasing from a gigantic range. There's ebay for bargains of all kinds. Maplin's one selling point was having a shop. They needed to make that work.

There were never that many people experimenting with wireless sets or audio electronics or the other electronics parts shop drivers, but there were enough. My guess is that the market for the latest iteration- arduino, Pi, IoT stuff, etc, is bigger than those previous hobbyist markets. What Maplin failed to do was become a go-to source for those purchases. It would have taken some imaginative management to grab that position but it could have been at least theoretically done.

If you're messing with microcontrollers you need all the paraphernalia from resistors to soldering stations. But you need more than a couple of outdated 8 bit PICs in your range to pull that market in. And they didn't do that.

The focus of electronics has always been a moving target. Maplin really didn't even try to catch the next wave, it seems. It's sad for me. I'm enough of a regular in my local shop to be known by the staff. I'm going to miss it.

But it's not like this is surprising, given the problems we've discussed already.
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