Early days at Watford Electronics

Popular UK hobby magazines like Practical Electronics, Everyday Electronics and Practical Wireless featured a wealth of constructional projects for electronics hobbyists to tackle. For most of us, getting components meant sending away for them by mail order. One supplier was Watford Electronics Ltd. of Cardiff Road, Watford, a supplier that I myself used in the 1970’s and 1980’s, as I’ve described elsewhere*. So I was delighted to hear from a former staff member at Watford Electronics, Ian Nicholls, who wrote to me with his interesting story describing life behind the scenes in the earliest days of Watford Electronics. I’ve précised it in this feature, for electronics enthusiasts who, like me, used to mail in to Watford Electronics in an era when home computing was also gaining popularity.

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Saverstore.com lights out?

It has somehow slipped beneath the radar but the website of saverstore.com - the IT vendor that rose from the ashes of the old Watford Electronics - has disappeared altogether. Nowhere can I find any details about their downfall though.

The website is unreachable and at the time of writing, their .co.uk domain name has been suspended at Nominet too. The dot-com domain merely shows a private registration now.

Clearly a wheel has fallen off but it's very sad to see this particular brand name sink without trace. I used Watford Electronics some 40 years ago to supply parts for my Multi Channel gas Sensor and other magazine projects, when they ran a small shop on Cardiff Road, Watford.

The original Watford Electronics shop, 33/35 Cardiff Road.I believe that originally Watford Electronics was set up by Nazir Jessa and his son Shiraz ran it. The name 'Watford Electronics' is now a dormant company [resulting from changing the name of another associated company to Watford Electronics] controlled by Shiraz Jessa, maybe for sentimental reasons(?).  Saverstore.com's address was Jessa House, Finway, Luton founded in the era when the home computer sector was thriving.

Several popular UK PC brand names eventually crashed and burned, including Tiny and Carrera and after diversifying into the IT sector Watford had its fair share of woes.  Today's PC market bears no resemblance to the scene of the 1990s and 2000s. A useful write-up on The Register is here.

I won't rake over the ashes any longer but I wrote a piece about the original Watford Electronics shop, as it now appears on Google Street View, here.

I also scanned my catalogue rear cover (image, left), as a nod to those fun, exciting and pioneering days of 1970s hobby electronics that I grew up with, eagerly awaiting my next packet of parts arriving in the post, paid for out of my pocket money.

Update on Thursday, July 13, 2017 at 6:17PM by Alan W

Saverstore.com crashes

It was known that Watford Electronics reinvented itself as Savastore (and then Saverstore), trading as an IT / PC vendor. This collapsed and was bought out by Globally Limited who in 2008 changed names to Online Distribution Limited.

On 17th May 2017 a winding up order was made against Online Distribution Limited, so unless it gets rescinded, that's the answer - they will have finally, and very sadly, bitten the dust.

Update on Monday, October 8, 2018 at 4:22PM by Alan W

A tribute to Watford Electronics

In 2018 I wrote this tribute to Watford Electronics and their role in the 1970's and 80's when UK hobby electronics was thriving, here.