Maplin and Toys R Us UK collapse on dark day for British retail - Sensationalist Headlines

[t]https://i.imgur.com/ZUV3KWo.jpg[/t] [url]https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/28/toys-r-us-falls-into-administration-putting-3200-uk-jobs-at-risk[/url] [quote]Two of the UK’s best-known retailers, Toys R Us and electronics specialist Maplin, have collapsed into administration on the same day, putting 5,500 jobs at risk. Administrators said they were still hoping to sell all or part of the two firms, which have struggled amid competition from internet giants such as Amazon and the weight of debts racked up by private equity backers. If no buyers can be found, around 3,000 staff at Toys R Us and a further 2,500 at electronics retailer Maplin are facing redundancy, potentially adding to a flurry of job losses so far in 2018. Carillion and bedmaker Warren Evans have also folded, endangering thousands of jobs, while staff cuts have been announced at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, British Gas, Debenhams and New Look. As investors watched for signs of stress in other retailers, shares in children’s clothes firm Mothercare slumped by 9% to an all-time low.[/quote] I hope Maplin survives, it's pretty much the only place you can go if you need an obscure ass cable ASAP and they will probably have it

I only ever shopped at Maplin if I needed something right that minute. Stupidly overpriced.

Only the UK Toys R Us? They aren't doing well in the US either.

If maplin adjusted their prices to be 5-10% above those of Amazon - I would happy shop there for everything I need. But 100% markup is fucking bs. (Mentioned this example before and will mention again). ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 ROG STRIX 8GB - 1129 Euro. Same card I bought from amazon: 639.80 Euro. Nearly double the price - it's a joke. It's still alright for thermal paste, fans, screws, cables, tools but for PC parts and even cases - it's insane. Same goes for Currys. Currys is such a shit business, it's insane. When I bought my TV - They offered it to me as: "Oh we will also give you a free HDMI cable which otherwise costs 70 euro, and a DVD setup guide". (I bought TV from currys because it's easier to carry TV to shop and complain if something is defective - which actually was the case when I bought it, had to bring it back and exchange) HDMI cable was - Thick braided cheap cable with "Gold Plated" connectors and connector enclosure which was just two pieces glued together (which later fell apart and I threw that cable out), it was like 50 cm, useless cable, [del]worth[/del] priced 70 Euro. DVD was just a DVD instruction how to improve video quality ("Use high quality cables, avoid interferance etc..") havent even opened it. The only reason Currys keeps functioning is because for general public - that's the tech shop and every salesman there is the "Genius" and generally public has nowhere else to go. Argos is good alternative but Argos requires you to know what you actually need. When I was looking to get 144hz monitor - I decided to try Currys, I called them and here is how conversation went: Me: "Hey, just wondering - Do you have any 120 hertz refresh rate monitors?" Currys: "Sure let me check that for you sir." [about 30 second break] Currys: "Yes so we have [random monitor model]" Me: "What refresh rate is that?" Currys: "Sorry, what's a refresh rate?" Me: "It's okay, nevermind, I will just go to my nearest store and have a look" Yeah.... ended up ordering BenQ 144hz from Amazon.

Isn't surprising, there is no way they can compete with online stores, particularly with increasing numbers offering one day delivery.

Hilariously overpriced, i wanted a HDMI to DVI adapter and maplins had one listed for £34.99, i bought one with next day delivery off amazon for £1.29. It's a shame to see jobs go but companies have to adapt or die, and a great way to adapt seems to be closing stores unfortunately.

Dog chewed threw my ethernet cable overnight. Needed a 30m ethernet cable replacement quick, 8 pounds on Amazon, 40 pounds from Maplin. Bought from Maplin purely to get back online right away, ordered an extra cable from Amazon just to avoid having to buy from Maplin if it ever happened again. Good riddance.

[QUOTE=Leestons;53167170]I only ever shopped at Maplin if I needed something right that minute. Stupidly overpriced.[/QUOTE] Don't know how TRU is across the pond but everything is marked up in the States ones.

I work at Maplin store in London. We're not surprised this happened at all, we saw it coming a year ago even more, but alas here we are. Our CEO resigned a few weeks prior and at that moment I knew something was going to happen. We were told to basically be careful of what we say on social media, but it's not an NDA or anything lmao so I still want to share some stuff: We as a store(all staff including Store Manager) know that the prices are bonkers or some items and we can't do anything about it - only to shrug and advise customers to buy it off Amazon. We do it more frequently than you might think because we see that some things are absurdly overpriced for what they are(DisplayPort to VGA short cable is £30, just saying) and customers themselves disagree with pricing we just tell them that. Not all the time, mind you, but on some items. Pay is crap. Plain and simple - for what they want you to do achieve as a store on daily basis they don't pay us enough to give a damn about it all. Store managment knows it but it doesn't matter. [editline]28th February 2018[/editline] [QUOTE=arleitiss;53167181] When I was looking to get 144hz monitor - I decided to try Currys, I called them and here is how conversation went: Me: "Hey, just wondering - Do you have any 120 hertz refresh rate monitors?" Currys: "Sure let me check that for you sir." [about 30 second break] Currys: "Yes so we have [random monitor model]" Me: "What refresh rate is that?" Currys: "Sorry, what's a refresh rate?" Me: "It's okay, nevermind, I will just go to my nearest store and have a look" Yeah.... ended up ordering BenQ 144hz from Amazon.[/QUOTE] Don't mean to sound like an ad for Maplin but we at the very least try to not let that happen. In my store we all know the very basics of all our items, so unless you ask for a very specific BNC connecting thing or intricate details of soldering then pretty much everyone in my store can tell you quickly if we got that item you're looking for. [editline]28th February 2018[/editline] [QUOTE=Bob The Knob;53167086]I hope Maplin survives, it's pretty much the only place you can go if you need an obscure ass cable ASAP and they will probably have it[/QUOTE] yeah man today I had plenty of customers say that to me. Glad to hear people do want to keep us around. One thing I hope that you people experienced in Maplin is the staff helping you out. We try help out every single customer in a store with any possible query you might have, and if you dont know how to connect x to y thing we'll try to find it out for you and find the right cable for that. Frequently we ask each other if what we thought of will actually work or no.

Will be shame to see maplin go, they were good for buying weird cables or components, or buying cables cut to length. Staff were always pretty helpful although the manager at the one I used to go to was more interested in playing with the toys than anything else. Prices were high on some stuff, the prices on things like RCAs were criminal [editline]28th February 2018[/editline] [QUOTE=RocketRacer;53167314]I work at Maplin store in London. We're not surprised this happened at all, we saw it coming a year ago even more, but alas here we are. Our CEO resigned a few weeks prior and at that moment I knew something was going to happen. We were told to basically be careful of what we say on social media, but it's not an NDA or anything lmao so I still want to share some stuff: We as a store(all staff including Store Manager) know that the prices are bonkers or some items and we can't do anything about it - only to shrug and advise customers to buy it off Amazon. We do it more frequently than you might think because we see that some things are absurdly overpriced for what they are(DisplayPort to VGA short cable is £30, just saying) and customers themselves disagree with pricing we just tell them that. Not all the time, mind you, but on some items. Pay is crap. Plain and simple - for what they want you to do achieve as a store on daily basis they don't pay us enough to give a damn about it all. Store managment knows it but it doesn't matter[/QUOTE] Just wondering, did maplin sell much of the toot they'd have in stock. My local ones used to have great piles of cheap remote control cars, rc mini helicopters and other similar sort of gadget-y toys, but did any of that ever sell?

[QUOTE=Doozle;53167396]Just wondering, did maplin sell much of the toot they'd have in stock. My local ones used to have great piles of cheap remote control cars, rc mini helicopters and other similar sort of gadget-y toys, but did any of that ever sell?[/QUOTE] Electronic toys sold really well during Xmas period, but everything else - meh. At least in my store, cheap drones and RC cars and all that sold well, but we had plenty of stuff leftover that we very slowly got rid of during January and February. Also at this moment in time we [B]don't[/B] have plans for "the big closing down sale", every fifth customer asks about it so might as well point it out here. No stores are going to be closed [I]yet[/I] either.

I found Maplins really good for electronics parts and tools, decent price and selection. I even got some PC hardware like cases and cooling stuff for the same price as online retailers.

Every time I go to Maplins I'm usually desperate for a cable, adapter or similar item to get something working that's either broken or requires additional items to work correctly. I also leave the store thinking "I'm desperate but not THAT desperate to pay those prices" and end up waiting 1-2 days for delivery of an item often 1/5th the price.

[QUOTE=sam.clarke;53171790]Every time I go to Maplins I'm usually desperate for a cable, adapter or similar item to get something working that's either broken or requires additional items to work correctly. I also leave the store thinking "I'm desperate but not THAT desperate to pay those prices" and end up waiting 1-2 days for delivery of an item often 1/5th the price.[/QUOTE] ive been in this exact situation more times than i can count. went in there cause i couldn't get a monitor cable on prime, ended up going without a monitor for a few days because they wanted £14 for a fucking dvi cable in 2018. got one of amazon in 2 days for £1. they're complete thieves [editline]1[/editline] it's a real shame becuase i live less than a minute away from one, i live so close that my bedroom is in their snapchat filter range and yet it's a complete waste of money to actually purchase anything

Toys r us is pretty decent for getting Lego, be a bit sad to see it gone

It seems that in a couple of weeks we'll know for sure if my store stays open or if the whole company goes down. Right now it's 50/50 for going bust/staying afloat.

I'm assuming Maplin is the UK equivalent of Radioshack - which sucks because radioshack was awesome in the 90's when it was an electronics hobby shop, before it became a store that sells cellphones and also some overpriced electronics parts

Yeah, not looking good over here. There's a good chance my team is gonna get the ax.

[QUOTE=Doneeh;53171993]Yeah, not looking good over here. There's a good chance my team is gonna get the ax.[/QUOTE] Toys R US or Maplin?

[QUOTE=Kylel999;53171923]I'm assuming Maplin is the UK equivalent of Radioshack - which sucks because radioshack was awesome in the 90's when it was an electronics hobby shop, before it became a store that sells cellphones and also some overpriced electronics parts[/QUOTE] Overpriced electronic parts sounds about right for Maplin

When are they going to drop the prices for the close down?

[QUOTE=Boss;53172693]When are they going to drop the prices for the close down?[/QUOTE] During liquidation they usually don't mark down prices as much as you'd think, contrary to popular belief. The liquidation companies actually [I]mark up[/I] shit to get the most money off the sticker price. :v: That's what ended up happening with Sears imploded. Although in this case, who the fuck knows what's going to happen considering it was already over priced to begin with.

[QUOTE=snookypookums;53173037]During liquidation they usually don't mark down prices as much as you'd think, contrary to popular belief. The liquidation companies actually [I]mark up[/I] shit to get the most money off the sticker price. :v: That's what ended up happening with Sears imploded. Although in this case, who the fuck knows what's going to happen considering it was already over priced to begin with.[/QUOTE] We so far just did the opposite - we don't have any money saving deals in stores and you can't order anything online, only reserve shit in stores. That is rather depressing. And I'm in a reasonably populated area and store is in a good spot so I wonder what will happen to us

maplin is obsolete... why pay ridiculous money for a cable you can get for a fifth of the price..

I am astonished it took this long for Maplin to go under. Obscenely overpriced.

Hardly maybe a year or two ago I visited a Maplin in Chester just to see what they had since it was bigger than my local one and I swear to god they had an old-style ball mouse on one of their back shelves that has packaging flaunting a 'third mouse button' and such other 'high end features' in an ancient style packaging. It was a genuinely really old ball mouse that they had for some reason that had a shelf price of around £30 I will never fucking forget this. I have a picture somewhere and if I find it I'll edit this post with it.

I've bought one thing from a Maplin in recent memory. A CPU heatsink as I totally forgot the Intel i-Series k models don't come with one any more. And the Intel mounting bracket for my old one had gone walkabouts. Surprisingly it was cheaper than buying it off Amazon by a few pence, they had them in stock at all and the staff actually knew what the fuck I was looking for. But every other time I've looked around a Maplin for anything (cabling mostly) it's just never been remotely cheap enough for me to justify it.

Checked out Toys R Us today to see if they had any decent Switch stuff on sale. Turns out they were pretty much holding it all back with the intent to get a refund from Nintendo or to sell to another retail group. Holy shit though the levels of psychology they clearly used on kids to make it like some sort of toy wonderland. I realised when I walked in (for the first time in what, over 15 years?) that I could see over the barriers and how small the actual store was, whereas my memories would have be convinced it was so much bigger. That said though the store was in large amounts of disarray (nothing really categorised properly, stuff placed all over that you'd expect together) so it really is no surprise they're going out of business.

Maplin has, for a good part of this century, been a sickening business that preys on uninformed (probably old people) customers, well turns out those customers aren't as uninformed as they used to be

[QUOTE=Anteep;53175602]Maplin has, for a good part of this century, been a sickening business that preys on uninformed (probably old people) customers, well turns out those customers aren't as uninformed as they used to be[/QUOTE] Sounds a bit like how Best Buy is here in the US, though the Best Buy prices didn't seem too bad (I've only been to a Best Buy once in a long time and that was last year during tax return time when I bought the headphones I use to this day), it's just the salespeople are rather pushy. But that's cuz they get a commission (iirc), so you sorta have to be pushy if you want that commission cash. Having worked at Wal-Mart I can sympathize with the crap my fellow retail workers have to put up with.