The trio placed an advertisement in an electronics magazine, after printing the company's first twenty eight page catalogue, which would be offered free to callers.

Despite a slow start and dwindling profit in the first year, the company began to gain a reputation for first grade electronic components delivered exactly as shown in the catalogue by first class post.

The mail order side of the business had outgrown the space available above the store in Westcliff-on-Sea, and an ex dairy building in Hadleigh was purchased and established as Maplin's first warehouse.

After the second store opened Electronics – the Maplin Magazine was launched and initially published every quarter, then monthly as more projects were designed.

The concurrent boom in home computer ownership in the beginning of the 1980s, spawned by manufacturers such as Sinclair, Commodore International and Atari, 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.

[13] The office was in charge of product sourcing, purchasing, inspecting, shipping and payment arrangement from Taiwan and was known as the Far East Operations Centre.

[16] In 2007, the company began to relocate its headquarters and distribution centre to a new facility at Brookfields Park, on the former Manvers Main Colliery, Rotherham, two miles from the old warehouse in Wombwell.

[18] In June 2013, Maplin introduced drop ship vending, allowing them to offer a far greater range of stock for sale online than available in-store.

It was reported in February 2018 that the company was seeking a buyer, and attempted to enter into a "pre pack" administration deal as part of a sale.

Its success in stopping the decline and stabilising profitability helps secure its acquisition by Rutland Partners in June 2014, investing in the next stage of the plan to 2020.

Maplin introduced three service guarantees in an attempt to improve its customer service interface: In the company's effort to remain part of the retail industry, it had invested £40 million to overhaul its e-commerce platforms on its website and through smart phone apps, and to reach a medium term goal of three hundred retail stores throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland before expanding abroad in 2015.

In November 2012, former Maplin CEO John Cleland stated, "We want to double the range of products we sell online from 15,000 to 30,000 stock keeping units (SKU) in the next three years, in some cases we will work on fulfilling orders by delivering straight from the manufacturer to the customer".

On 10 March 2018, a video announcement was made to staff members via the internal social media platform "Fuse", informing them that PwC had failed to locate a buyer for some or all of the business and would begin the store closure programme, which was expected to take around three months to conclude.