Established back in the 1970s as a popular High Street electronics brand, Maplin has seen incredible growth over the past few years after switching its focus to ecommerce.
Today, Ollie Marshall the firm’s MD, joins Caroline on the podcast to discuss the key drivers behind a whopping 495% YOY growth, which saw the brand rank 7th on the Lighting 50 list of Britain's fastest growing online retailers.
Show Notes | Series 1, Episode 7 | Maplin
About our podcast
Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.
About our guest
Maplin is an online electronics specialist. The well-known brand was a mainstay on the British high street going back to 1976, but closed its physical stores in 2018 to relaunch as a fully online retailer. Today the brand sells everything electrical, from computing, television and audio equipment to entertainment systems and smart gadgets. The brand grew 495% in 2019/20. For this podcast, we spoke to Ollie Marshall, Managing Director at Maplin.
Transcript highlights:
- “At Maplin we sell everything from routers and gaming supplies, through to the weird and wonderful products we’re known for such as metal detectors, smoke machines and soldering irons.”
- “We relaunched as an online only retailer in January 2019, so spent that year getting back on our feet, rebuilding the team, tech and supply chain. Then as lockdown kicked in, we worked very hard to keep wheels in motion - as people wanted working-from-home equipment to use during the day, straight through to music, games consoles and entertainment devices for their evenings. Though a lot of our growth was natural due to restarting the business, Covid’s effect just sat perfectly with our category of products.”
- “When we relaunched as online only it meant we could reimagine what a supply chain was. We work heavily with a concept called dropshipping, so we don’t fulfil all of our orders but work closely with a number of suppliers who conduct service on our behalf, and that means we can be very agile. For us, operationally, our technology and systems have been a huge competitive advantage for us.”
- We work with a Magento e-commerce website. For dropshipping and distribution, that’s in-house, built in C#. I think fraud is underappreciated as a lever of growth - the more you sell, the bigger chance of fraud - so we work with a company called Signifyd to protect us from that. We use Akeneo for product information and Swogo for automated bundling so we can increase those basket sales. There’s so many more, but those are the ones that effectively keep the whole machine running smoothly.”
- “I get a lot of inbound marketing from tech vendors, but I do think the best ones tend to rise to the top in terms of coverage and word of mouth. You just need a good feel for what your business actually needs. I also consider the culture of the business, their support, level of service - those are all big factors for me.”
- “Cost of commodities is a huge challenge for us, such as shipping costs and shortages overseas. Container costs, for example, have gone through the roof - and will only go higher in 2023 when new legislation comes in around lowering emissions. To tackle this, we’re working with a company called Quiver which offers 3PL for more sustainable, diverse delivery options.”
- “As you grow, things like returns become a massive problem. When you’re bigger in scale, you need a real process around it - a high volume ‘exit plan’ for these returns. ASOS is a great example of a company who has done this really well.”
- “Partnerships are a fantastic way of growing your business. We’re about to partner with B&Q, and we already partner with fulfilment providers Gorillas and GoPuff. There are huge benefits to diversifying in this way.”
Top takeaways
● Maplin ranked 7th place on the Brightpearl Lightning 50 and topped the Electronics and Components sector.
● That followed a 495% YOY revenue increase in 2019/20.
● The tech instrumental to the brand’s growth was its in-house dropshipping functionality, its Magento website and anti-fraud e-commerce tool, Signifyd.
● Maplin heavily uses dropshipping to increase sales volume and geographical reach.
● Relaunching as online only has given Maplin a competitive advantage, as the retailer has been able to reinvent its supply chain and use a roster of tech and software to keep the business moving.
● The brand also uses Akeneo for product information management, Swogo for automated bundles and is working with Quiver to diversify its delivery options.