IKEA; 014

What I like about these IKEA "Alkalisk" batteries is that they are very much in-line with their companies furniture products; 

IKEA Alkalisk 1

Clean and simple design, not fussy or over-elaborate. In fact, not fussy to the extent that the other side of the battery is literally blank;

IKEA Alkalisk 2

Great stuff. ;-)

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".  ;-)

PIFCO; 011

Provincial Incandescent Fittings Company may not be a name that is immediately identifiable to most people, and even with my marginally "techy" background I couldn't place it... but putting on my Alan Turing hat, just looking at the initial letters gives you "PIFC", which I then realised was actually "PIFCO" which I have heard of.

PICFO 1

PIFCO are for me, a budget-priced electronics and electricals manufacturer. The best way to demonstrate that is to use what is commonly known as the "Argos Principle" (well, for me anyway).

I came up with this theorem a long time ago, as a customer of Argos, when I had an Epiphany when looking through the company's catalogue. For those of you that aren't familiar with Argos and can't be bothered to click the link, they are one of the last (or THE last?) catalogue-based shopping retailers I'm aware of in the UK; you walk into their High Street stores, and rather than having everything on sale out and visible, you instead have "stands" or kiosks which house a huge, thick, laminated each page catalogue, along with pens / pencils and order "forms". The idea is that you use the catalogue to find what you want to order, fill in the catalogue number on an order slip, and either take it to the till and pay, or take it to a self-service kiosk and pay by card in the same way. You then get an order number and proceed to the "collection point", and your goods are picked and conveyed to the collection point from the stock area. The idea here is that the tiny "show room" aka catalogue space allows for much more of the store space to be used for warehousing of the stock. 

IKEA springs to mind as another company that does this sort of "fill out an order form and collect it as you leave", but the difference to Argos is that IKEA still has all the items out on display for you to view physically, where as Argos doesn't; you are literally "trusting" the catalogue pictures and text.

Anyway, without going off at a tangent too much, the thing I always find with Argos was that if you shop for any given item, they will have a range of goods covering a range of prices. Let's take a simple filter coffee maker... they will have the cheapest (probably their own "Cookworks"-brand one) for something like £7, right up to a top-of-the-range "Heston Blumenthal" filter coffee maker, for £199.99, and everything in between. 

What I always find myself doing is despite having no money these days, I always subconsciously discount the cheapest item and usually the next two or three "up"... or in other words if there are 10 coffee makers, I'll discount 10, 9, and probably number 8, along with the most expensive 1, 2 and possibly 3, leaving me with a choice of just 4. 

What I didn't realise was that I'm not alone in doing this, and Argos knows it too; although I can't find anything online right now, I remember reading that we all look at lists like this and think "Oh, I don't want the cheapest one... that'll be junk... and I don't want to pay for the most expensive one, as that will just be over-the-top "name brand" no better than something cheaper.... No, I'll get whatever I can afford from the remaining middle 'chunk'."

Argos know this is how people tend to shop from "lists", be it online, in a catalogue or whatever, where groups of similar products are involved. They ensure that in each store they will always have more of the "middle band" goods, and only a limited number of the cheapest and the most expensive items. The same likely goes for their UK supply / buying strategy; don't buy 100,000 of each coffee maker; buy numbers based on where they sit in the price hierarchy; 10,000 of the expensive one, 10,000 of the cheapest one, and 100,000 of the mid-range ones.

Do you find you tend to use this approach, even if you've never considered it before?

PIFCO 2

Where was I? Oh yes, so PIFCO to me is a somewhat "lower" brand-name, along the lines of "Binatone" (another often cheapest option for any electricals in the Argos catalogue), rather than up there with the giants of name-brands like "Apple", "Sony" et al.

What I didn't realise was that the company has been in existence for over 100 years, originally established in Manchester in 1900, Provincial Incandescent Fittings Co or PIFCO as they are now better known, sold a wide range of lighting, stoves & household goods from the first oil filled heaters, to developments in lighting and domestic appliances.

Battery-wise, I don't recall seeing these for sale in any of the stores I visit, and have only encountered them already fitted as OEM batteries in some products (and not PIFCO ones, I mean... I think I bought a garden ultrasonic cat scarer once that came with batteries and they were PIFCO ones, and that was years ago) but I did find you can still buy them here, for example, although PIFCO as a brand was no longer being used by the actual owners, Russell Hobbs for some time, but was then licensed for use by one KB (Import and Export) Ltd in 2007 who went on to market a range of electrical items under the name.

Bit leaky this one, but it does look to be at least 7 years old as of 2019.

Infapower Rechargeable; 012

For a company that I've never heard of before, nor seen any batteries on sale anywhere for, Infapower's claims to be the fastest growing brand of rechargeable batteries in the UK and that they are the biggest selling brand in most independent wholesalers is a surprise... 

Infapower 1

Still, I'm always pleased to read about a British company doing well, even in a market dominated by imports. 

To quote from their website;

"Infapower® produce one the largest range of consumer rechargeable batteries in the country, helping to make Infapower the biggest British brand of rechargeable batteries. Using the same business principles, Infapower also produce a comprehensive range of high specification Torches & Lanterns, USB chargers, Mobile Phone Cables and Electrical Accessories. Recently we have introduced Computer Peripherals, Audio products and when a cup of tea is top priority, Kettles. Our small domestic appliances range now also includes Fan Heaters, Irons and Toasters."

Infapower 2

All of the products come in Infapower’s distinctive and eye-catching packaging, creating instant impact on display. Emphasis is placed on quality and durability. All products are developed and tested to ensure high standards of workmanship that offers the consumer performance, reliability and value for money.

That I will agree with; their design using the rainbow mosaic does make them unique in visual design, in a way that made Duracell's "copper-coloured top" a well-recognised branding amongst batteries and which is often plagiarised now by many Chinese manufacturers.

Infapower 3

Talking of rainbow designs, I know that the rainbow as a symbol is being used more and more within a Gay Pride context, but these designs are amongst my favourites so far for batteries. These are Xiaomi's rainbow-coloured "5 AA" batteries, which launched as as a pack of 10, with each battery being coloured differently. Although this dates from 2015, I can't find anything new about if they now sell single colour packs, for example, which is what I'd offer. Mind you, I can see that as a manufacturer and / or retailer, that may well see you out of pocket if no one wants yellow and you end up with stock left over you can't sell.

Xiaomi "5 AA"Rainbow Batteries 1

Have you used Infapower batteries? Where did you buy them?

Incidentally, posting this one has made me notice that this is actually a rechargeable battery, rather than a one-use alkaline one. It got me to thinking why are these rated at 1.2v rather than 1.5 volts that you see written on all the batteries and in all the user guides for battery equipment... so why the difference? 

Well, looking online I found this well-written eBay article which covers it very well. Worth a look.

Hmmm... now I'm a bit torn... should I post just single-use batteries, or "any" AA battery?

Wilko Extra "Baked Beans" Oranges Design; 010

If you've been a customer of "Wilko" aka "Wilkinson's" over the last few years, you may well have caught sight of these batteries where they usually hang up next to every till, and mainly because of their striking design;

Wilko Extra "Baked Beans" Oranges 1

The funny thing is, when I was recently "diving" for batteries in one store's dead battery container, I was very pleased to see this one at the bottom thinking that if any battery design deserved an award (Like the Oscars, but... er... "The Batties?") then it would be this one. I used to think that was an image of Baked Beans" for some reason, but looking at it a bit closer it's obviously not Baked Beans but oranges (I think?) instead.

Have a think as to why oranges (or Baked Beans) might be chosen for the design of an AA battery, whilst I tell you a bit about why Wilkinson's (as I always refer to it) is also known as "Wilko";

So, originally the company was founded back in 1930, and has always been run by the Wilkinson family, hence the name.  However in 2012, the family began to re-brand the stores as "Wilko", as this was the name that was in-use on their own-brand products, much like the direct polar opposite of how "Marks and Spencer" decided to drop their own-brand "St. Michael" name in 2000, having used it for 73 years.

Just after this in 2014, one side of the family sold all their holdings after an 84-year span in retail. Sources close to the retailer insisted the family has not fallen out, but that Ms Swann’s side of the family wanted to pursue “other business interests”. Their shareholding in the business has been sold to the other side of the Wilkinson family, which is led by Lisa Wilkinson, who is now the sole chairman.

Then, Wilkinson is likely to have been valued in excess of £500m in the transaction. In 2014, it reported sales of £1.53bn and pre-tax profits of £27.5m. Karin Swann and Lisa Wilkinson are the third generation of the family to run Wilkinsons.

Wilko Extra "Baked Beans" Oranges 2

The company’s founder, who is known as JK, had two children, Tony and Barbara Wilkinson, who were the second generation to run the business. Mrs Swann is Barbara’s daughter and Lisa Wilkinson is Tony’s daughter. It is Barbara’s side of the family that decided to cease being shareholders. This means that complete ownership of the retailer has passed to Tony Wilkinson, his wife Christine, and Lisa Wilkinson, who remains the family director.

So, any guesses as to why they have used oranges on the battery?

No, neither have I. 

;-)

[EDIT: 08/01/2019 08:56 - Yes, stop laughing at the back please. I realised in a flash of inspiration last night why it's oranges...it must be because electricity / batteries can be said to have "run out of juice" where juice is a slang term for energy. I still think Baked Beans would have worked too; you can be "full of beans", can't you?]

AGFAPhoto Heavy Duty; 009

This is another battery from what I think of as a camera / camera film manufacturer; AGFA. 

AGFA Heavy Duty Premium 1

 AGFA, otherwise known as "Agfa" or Agfa-Gevaert (do wish these companies would stick to block capitals, lowercase, whatever and stop the mix and match lettering. It drives the OCD in me into overdrive) is actually three separate companies; "Agfa Graphics" offers integrated prepress and industrial inkjet systems to the printing and graphics industries, whilst "Agfa HealthCare" supplies hospitals and other care organisations with imaging products and systems, as well as information systems. "Agfa Specialty Products" supplies products to various industrial markets and these are all part of the whole that part of the "Agfa Materials" organization. In addition to the Agfa Specialty Products activities, Agfa Materials also supplies film and related products to Agfa Graphics and Agfa HealthCare themselves.

I remember that a number of years ago AGFA were quite a reputable company, and I began to wonder just what happened to them, as I can't recall seeing their logo on anything nor anywhere come to think of it.

Turns out that the consumer imaging division division which I was thinking of and which were once makers of prominent consumer products was sold to a company founded via management buyout in 2004. "AgfaPhoto GmbH", as the new company was called, filed for bankruptcy after just one year.

AGFA Heavy Duty Premium 2

What happened was that the brands are now licensed to other companies by "AgfaPhoto Holding GmbH", a holding firm and because of that, and following this sale, Agfa-Gevaert's commerce today is 100% business-to-business.

Phew, I don't think I could have crammed another business name of theirs into the space above. ;-)

Not sure how old this one is, but there's no "use by" date, suggesting it's pretty old. That would tally with the leakage you can see on it. Not exactly a great advert for them, is it?

ALDI Activ Energy; 008

Not one I'd ever heard of, but a quick search reveals this is a brand that is commonly sold at the "German originally, now in the UK" supermarket chain; ALDI;

ALDI Activ Energy 1

Reading a good history page from the Telegraph newspaper here, I found out that the name Aldi is a combination of Albrecht and discount. They also focuses on own-brand products, which account for around 90% of their sales in the UK.

Aldi arrived in the UK in 1990, having originally started back in 1946 in Essen, Germany. Quoting verbatim from the article, "From the small provincial store, they built one of Germany’s biggest retailers, which became renowned for its low prices. However, in 1960, the business and its 300 shops were split by the brothers after they fell out over whether to sell cigarettes. This led to Aldi being separated into Aldi Nord, which operates shops in the north of Germany, and Aldi Sud, which is based in the south and now operates the Aldi stores in the UK. Karl Albrecht took control of Aldi Sud. He is now in his 90s and ranked by Forbes as the richest man in Germany."

I wonder what he spends his money on at his age? Cocaine and prostitutes, or Anusol Hemorrhoid Cream? Perhaps he lives a permanent life in Walt Disney World, Florida... I know I would if I could. ;-)

Useless fact; did you know that the name ALDI is a combination of  the German words "albrecht" and the English word "discount", meaning "bright discount", unless I've totally got that wrong Rabatt is the german word for discount, which would have made them "ALRA", which perhaps is a little too close to the pop-group "ABBA". I'd guess Benny, Bjorn, er... Frankie and the other one whose name I forget in the group have very powerful lawyers and would have sued. ;-)

ALDI Activ Energy 2

I did also find a Which? review of these batteries, but you need to sign up and subscribe real money to them, to enable you to read it in full. I'll be buggered if I'm going to do that, but if you have a subscription, feel free to share the more salient parts in the comments below. 

It's a simple design, this one, but somehow the motion that the lines give to the text make it appear space-like and futuristic... well, to me, but that might be a side-effect of the painkillers I'm taking right now.

The text suggests it was partly proof-read too, it doesn't fall into the "Keep out of Children" mis-translation trap, but does however suggest that you dispose of a fire. Question to self: Can you incinerate a fire to dispose of it, or is it safe to just put it alight in the bin? ;-)

£1.99 for eight at the time of going to press gives a cost of... hang on a moment... I have a calculator here.... oh, yes; 24.8p or so each.