Maplin Electronics
 |
|
| Private, Limited | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 22 June 1976 |
| Founder | Roger Allen, Sandra Allen, Doug Simmons |
| Headquarters | Manvers, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK |
|
Number of locations
|
218 stores |
|
Area served
|
United Kingdom, Ireland |
|
Key people
|
Oliver Meakin (CEO) |
| Products |
Electronics Gadgets Computing |
| Owner | Rutland Partners |
|
Number of employees
|
Over 2,000 |
| Website | www |
Maplin Electronics is a retailer of electronic goods in the UK and Ireland.
As of January 2016, there are 218 Maplin Electronics stores. The company operates an extensive online, telephone, and mail-order sales service.
Maplin Electronic Supplies was established in 1972 as a small mail order business by Roger and Sandra Allen and Doug Simmons. The company originally started in a bedroom at the Allens' home in Rayleigh, Essex, after the two electronics enthusiasts were disappointed by the complexity and poor availability of existing electronic component suppliers.
The trio placed a small advertisement in an electronics magazine after printing the company's first 28-page catalogue, which would be offered free to callers. Despite a slow start and dwindling profit in the first year, the company began to create a reputation for offering first grade electronic components that are delivered exactly as shown in the catalogue by first class post.
The first store opened in Westcliff-on-Sea; the mail order department business moved into the spare rooms above the shop. Sales received a large boost when Maplin was invited to take prime advertising space in IPC Electronics magazines after receiving a large number of complaints against some of their existing advertisers.
A second store opened in Hammersmith by the end of the year. The mail order side of the business had outgrown the space available above the Westcliff-on-Sea store and a large ex-dairy building a few miles away in Hadleigh was purchased and was soon established as Maplin's first warehouse.
Maplin had already started designing electronic kits for hobbyists and musicians, with several major synthesiser and organ projects being published in the first magazine, Electronics & Music Maker, and subsequently made available as kits. Shortly after the second store opened, the technical team and management launched Electronics - the Maplin Magazine, which was initially published every quarter, then later as more projects were designed the publication was issued monthly.
The kits were a perfect vehicle to sell Maplin's components and the articles in Electronics published full circuit diagrams, parts lists and technical articles with full instructions for building and setting up the projects. All this happened in the early 1980s, and the sudden boom in home computer ownership spawned by manufacturers such as Sinclair, Commodore International and Atari created opportunities for Maplin to create home build project kits to plug into these computers such as speech synthesisers, memory expansion cards, extension keyboards, cables, and connectors.
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