How the sale went down
The private equity people walked into the room - at which point all the Maplin staff execs scarpered out of sight. When they did reappear, they were unable to answer the most basic questions about the business, merely reading out what was written about it in the catalogue. They also refused, point blank, to make eye contact.
When the P/E execs made their offer to buy the outfit, they got the response "sorry, we don't have one in stock at the moment, but if you come back next week, we'll order one for you - but in the mean time, would you like a radio-controlled toy with lots of flashing lights".
Luckily, the P/E guys were too savvy to fall for the Maplin teams offer of buying an extended warranty with the company (no, you don't get your money back if the company turns out to be broken), but they did buy an extra set of batteries for a bargain £5 million.