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Not surprising really. I've been into a few of their shops and they always reminded me of the last days of Tandy / Radio Shack: cheap stuff and unhelpful staff.
by andyjohnson0 9y ago
Not surprising really. I've been into a few of their shops and they always reminded me of the last days of Tandy / Radio Shack: cheap stuff and unhelpful staff. I'm sad for the people who will probably lose their jobs though. Very hard to compete with online suppliers in that space.
My local Maplin is/was the only physical shop in reasonable travelling distance for emergency purchases of things like perfboard or solder. But when they stopped selling even a basic selection of components I switched to ebay and haven't been back there.
- Already__Taken 9y agoThey should have doubled down on things I can't easily know to get online. connectors, buttons, displays, enclosure, anything I'd like to get my hands on to feel or wouldn't know the name of to even search for. I thought i'd get some buttons for a control panel, the selection was terrible and what was there was nasty and cheap feeling but cost a lot. Ended up just getting some crimps I needed and those were such poor quality I ended up re-crimping the project next day once amazon turned up.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoI don't think there was much they could do, it was inevitable that stuff would shift online, the economics of selling it in retail didn't add up.
- andyjohnson0 9y agoThat would be great for you and me, but "normal" people don't need such things and business customers use RS[1] or Farnell. You can't maintain a retail network selling to hackers/makers. [1] Whose physical shops inexplicably don't even open at the weekend. Grrr.