Maple IT closes shop, shocking city resellers

Maple IT Hardware, one of the city’s high profile peripherals vendor, has

made a low profile exit from business recently leaving hundreds of resellers in

the lurch.

In a communiqué to this correspondent, Maple IT’s Director AJ Razack

confirmed the market rumors that Maple IT Hardware had closed down its

operations effective from first week of November.

Earlier, the market was abuzz with rumors that Maple would be closing down

its operations anytime. Meanwhile, the company was hurriedly pushing its stocks

in the market and a few resellers had taken large quantities of Maple products

recently, according to market sources. But, the sudden closure has sent shock

waves among the resellers as they are worried about warranty and other support

issues. Maple had earlier claimed to have over 70 regional distributor, 750

resellers across 41 cities.

"I

never knew that Maple would be this sort of company. They came up like a wave

and faded out instantaneously. I really don’t know what to do with the stocks

I have taken from them," said a reseller requesting anonymity.

"In the last couple of months, we have not been getting stocks properly

and we thought it was some inventory mismanagement problem within the company.

However, when things came to light we are left lost as we do not hold any stocks

for the replacement and warranty purposes," said another reseller in the

market.

When asked about the warranty issues with Razack, he replied, "Maple is

closed and there is no point in talking about warranty support for the resellers

now."

Maple was distributing products such as keyboard, mouse, low-end speakers,

joysticks and gamepads. It also announced that it would launch cabinets, hi-end

speakers, motherboards, modems, monitors and PCs, which did not happen.

According to sources close to the company, Maple had to pay over Rs 30 lakh

to various sources in the market, while its outstanding (amount receivable) was

about Rs 3 lakh from Tamil Nadu market.

"We all were thrown out off gear last week and he (AJ Razack) did not

give any proper notice to us. We are worried about our final settlements and I

could not find any reason for this sudden move," said an employee of the

company. According to him, there are goods worth over Rs 1.3 crore lying in the

warehouse in Chennai and some stocks in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and other

cities. The company has a godown in Numbal village, Pallikuppam, Chennai.

S GOPIKRISHNA