Maplin; 013

 As The Beatles might have said, "It was 10 years ago today, that Woolworth's high street shops went away... Sargent Pepper's Lonely Heart Shops Brands!" 

Is it really 10 years since Woolworth's closed its doors in Chelmsford High Street, and the rest of the UK? I can scarcely believe it is that long. With that one lighting of the fuse, it seemed to lead to the closing of many other well-loved and long-standing brands in the UK, among them Toys 'R' Us, Maplins, Poundworld, with HMV remaining open despite two brushes with going into administration. House of Fraser, Debenhams, New Look, Prezzo and an even larger number are reported to be struggling too.

While a little indifferent to some of these chains going, excluding Woolworth's which was a sad loss of a British institution, I felt a real tinge of sadness when Maplin closed down. I used to enjoy going in there when we were lucky enough to get our own Maplin store in Chelmsford (it replaced "Blockbuster Video" which was another sad loss), saving me having to shlep all the way over to Lakeside if I wanted something techie in a hurry. There just aren't any places in the High Street these days that sell things like SATA cables...

When I was growing up, Maplin was THE place to go and buy electronics and electronic components... the sort of place someone who was a member of their schools "Electronics Club" would go to, much like Games Workshop has its niche of customers (and it still has it's store in Chelmsford, thankfully). The business started in 1972, with the first stores opening just after this, so they were well-placed to ride the then boom in home computers during the early 1980s spawned by manufacturers such as Sinclair, Commodore International and Atari, all of these created opportunities for Maplin. They produced home build project kits such as speech synthesisers, memory expansion cards, extension keyboards, cables, and connectors to plug into these computers.

Maplin Alkaline 1

At the height of production of the home build kits Maplin's range was vast, with in-house designed power amplifiers, radio kits, a weather station and a full weather satellite receiving and display system and many others, as well as the Heathkit and Velleman ranges of kits. The catalogue, with its distinctive science fiction cover art by Lionel Jeans, contained hundreds of application circuits and hundreds of thousands of copies were distributed each year.

I was convinced that Maplin was the "UK arm" of the huge US companies Radioshack and Tandy but having done my research, I see I'm well off the mark. Tandy, of which we did have UK stores a long time ago, were indeed part of Radioshack but they had no direct relationship to Maplin as companies. In fact, I see that Radioshack itself went down in 2015.

Can you believe that Radioshack even had a "Battery of the Month" club! Members were allowed one "Enercell" battery per month, on production of their membership card. Very much a loss-leader, the offer attracted foot-traffic which then lead to more sales.

I can see why online retailers are so profitable these days; I'm very much of a "go and get it now" person, who would much rather go to a shop and buy something when I need it, rather than order it online and have to wait a few days for it. When I wanted to buy some extra memory for my laptop, I spent ages looking to places that might sell it over the counter and pretty much struck a blank. A Town, nay "City",  the only place I could come up with was "Currys" as a place that sold stand-alone memory at a reasonable price. That's in the whole of Chelmsford... 

Maplin Alkaline 2

Now, yes, there are smaller private shops that had it for sale, but these are small "one man" outfits, where the prices are far and above a chain-store price, and frankly astronomical when compared to online shops. 

Anyway, I'm rambling now, so let's get back to Maplins. Along with a wide range of electronic products Maplin sold batteries, usually their own brand. I don't recall them being particularly cheap nor exorbitantly expensive, but more of a "middle of the road" product. I don't think I ever bought any, and I suppose given they went under, nobody else did either.

In all honesty, although the staff were amazing and could help pretty much anyone out, they tended to have things priced far higher than anyone else and I left the store on a number of occasions frustrated that I'd found what I wanted but at a price I couldn't afford afford or even justify to myself. Even when they went into receivership and started their "closing down" sales, their final reduction prices on some things were actually still more expensive than places like Argos! God-only knows what the administrator was thinking here... I can't see the logic in it myself.

Do you lament a favourite store in your town that has long since gone, possibly closed down for good? 

I fondly remember the many times I used to wander around "InLines" (or was it "In-Lines"?), looking at all the weird and wonderful things they had. In-Lines, although whilst I can't find any pictures or mention of the store, was a chain of shops that sold... well, "gifts and novelties" I suppose... bit like somewhere like "Clinton Cards", but with a lot less emphasis on greetings cards, and more things like carpets, mugs, posters, home furnishings, jokes, gifts, party supplies, books, candy and stuff. They had a range of balloons, and even a printing set-up in our one, so you could buy a replica football top with your own name hot-foiled onto the back.

We still have something I bought from there, probably 20 or 30 years ago now; a "Bed Snake Bat".  ;-)