Ebuyer could be next major UK PC parts retailer to shut down

[DragonSlayer101]

What just happened? British tech retailer Ebuyer reportedly sent staff members home earlier than usual on August 6, sparking speculation that it may be on the verge of shutting down. The report also claims that the company received a Winding Up Petition on August 1 to vacate the property it currently uses as its office and warehouse.

At the time of writing, the Ebuyer website remains active and it is still apparently possible to place orders. It is unclear, however, whether these orders will be fulfilled and, if not, how buyers will receive refunds. The company has not yet released a statement on the matter.

According to UK-based tech news outlet Overclock3d, both the consumer and business telephone support lines are experiencing "technical difficulties," with a pre-recorded voice message advising callers to contact the company via email instead.

The report adds that Ebuyer has been facing "financial challenges" after a potential deal to acquire the company fell through at the last moment. Ebuyer is currently owned by Mark Reed and Rich Marsden, who bought it from The West Retail Group in 2023. The company sells a wide range of PCs and related products, including laptops, CPUs, graphics cards, peripherals, and more.

Unless the current owners have thrown in the towel, Ebuyer may still be saved from liquidation if it can find a new buyer with deep pockets. However, if it fails to do so, this could be the end of the road for the company. In that case, Overclockers and Scan will be the only two major online PC hardware retailers in the country, potentially hurting competition and raising prices for consumers.

If Ebuyer closes permanently, it will be the second major PC parts retailer in the UK to do so this decade, following BOX, which ceased operations in January 2024. Rumors later suggested that BOX could return, but those reports proved inaccurate.

Ebuyer is the UK's second largest PC retailer and employs around 200 staff, according to the company's official LinkedIn page. If reports of its closure prove correct, all of these jobs will likely be lost, adding to the growing number of redundancies in the country's retail sector.

According to the British Retail Consortium, around 117,000 full-time and nearly 250,000 part-time retail jobs have disappeared in the UK over the past decade, with a further 160,000 roles believed to be at risk in the future.

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Ebuyer could be next major UK PC parts retailer to shut down

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Not all that surprising. The UK has been in a sort of perma-recession for over 15 years now. It's economy just plain sucks (3.5 trillion GDP vs California's $4.1, despite having over twice the population, worse per capita GDP then Mississippi) and I'm surprised it was able to maintain 4 major part retailers on its own for this long.

 

[kingmustard]

What a shame

I have ordered a few dozen products from Ebuyer over the years.

The oldest orders I have on record from them are: (prices are 2025 after inflation)

Aug 2004 - a mousepad with LEDs (£11) (I just turned 18 years old at this point)
Dec 2004 - an 'Ebuyer' 512 MB MP3 player (£90)
Jan 2005 - A 100 Mbps PCMCIA card (£35) and a Samsung SM172X 17" TFT monitor (£415)
Mar 2005 - an 'Ebuyer' 128 MB MP3 player (£114)
Apr 2005 - A 256 MB MMC card (£25)
Sep 2005 - A LiteOn LVW-5002B VHS/DVD player (£143) and a 5-pack of DVD+RW discs (£5)
Oct 2005 - A 1 GB USB flash drive (£62)

Listing those was a trip down memory lane.

Would feel strange to have a world without Ebuyer. Same if Neowin went away.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

PC hardware is a cut throat business to be in, it seems, especially since the online shopping tends to undercut brick and mortar stores.

Years ago Comp USA was a big name in the PC world in the States, but it closed doors in the early 2000s if memory serves me right. Then sometime in the mid 2010s (going off memory, too lazy to verify) Fry's ended up closing their doors, too. Never been to a Fry's, but my understanding it a lot like Micro Center.

In Canada you have Tiger Direct retails close, NCIX and Computer City Canada....

Thankfully we still have Micro Center and Best Buy has come back into the PC hardware business a little. Game Stop jumped into the PC hardware for a minute, back during the hard to acquire GPU era of the Ampere and RDNA 2 days (surprisingly they still have a few things you can buy on their website from those days, a couple of GPUs that are horribly overpriced - $500 for a RTX 3070 - a couple of CPUs and a couple other things).

 

[Axeia]

Having moved from the Netherlands to the UK I have to say the PC part stores here are rather disappointing. Somehow the tiny Netherlands has like 30 stores whilst the UK has about a handful.
If ebuyer drops out I think it's pretty much just OCUK, Scan, awd-it, Curries and cclonline that's left.

 

[Squuiid]

Ballicom are awesome. I’ve used them for years now and they always wipe the floor with Ebuyer. Shame about ebuyer, but there are still other options out there.
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.ballicom.co.uk

 

[Burty117]

Not all that surprising. The UK has been in a sort of perma-recession for over 15 years now. It's economy just plain sucks (3.5 trillion GDP vs California's $4.1, despite having over twice the population, worse per capita GDP then Mississippi) and I'm surprised it was able to maintain 4 major part retailers on its own for this long.

If you take London out of the UK, there’s almost no wealth here now.

It’s insane the population has let it get this bad to be honest, because of how passive normal British people are, I assume it’ll get quite a bit worse, then someone will blow up the Houses of Parliament, That old chestnut.

 

[LordVile95]

If you take London out of the UK, there’s almost no wealth here now.

It’s insane the population has let it get this bad to be honest, because of how passive normal British people are, I assume it’ll get quite a bit worse, then someone will blow up the Houses of Parliament, That old chestnut.

That’s what happens when the conservatives decide to sell the country to foreign businesses to help their members rather than the country.

 

[Rudyduu]

That’s what happens when the conservatives decide to sell the country to foreign businesses to help their members rather than the country.

This isn't about "conservatives" it's about rich out of touch politicians, all of them. Which group of politicians has actually made the country better for The People? None of them. They care about money and power and not The People, but people keep electing the same politics that didn't care about them before. While many industries are hurting in the UK, the banks don't seem to be having many issues.

 

[LordVile95]

This isn't about "conservatives" it's about rich out of touch politicians, all of them. Which group of politicians has actually made the country better for The People? None of them. They care about money and power and not The People, but people keep electing the same politics that didn't care about them before. While many industries are hurting in the UK, the banks don't seem to be having many issues.

It really is. They were the ones who decided to sell most of the national infrastructure going back nearly 50 years to private firms and reducing the budget of the remaining elements to cripple it to justify selling that off as well.

Banks generally don’t have issues? They focus on low risk investments. They only run into issues if they go high risk like the Lehman brothers did with their sub-prime mortgage gamble or the global stock market crashes.

 

[Burty117]

People keep electing the same politics that didn't care about them before.

Honestly? What your're saying is obviously true, but there isn't any alternatives either, there isn't a single political party in the UK I would trust to actually make any difference either. The whole system needs a serious shake up (although I think it might be too late now).

It really is. They were the ones who decided to sell most of the national infrastructure going back nearly 50 years to private firms and reducing the budget of the remaining elements to cripple it to justify selling that off as well.

Yet whenever another party got into power (Labour) they also haven't reversed anything, in some cases, doubled down on the existing tory policies.

Our water system being privatised has failed, obviously so, every single party in the commons have been shouting for months now that the government needs to plan to bring the whole industry back into the public domain, the only people against it? Whoever's in power at the time, this time, it's Labour.

Some of the most expensive electricity in the world? UK.
Crippling sewage and clean water systems because of 50 years of under-investment and chronically debt laiden companies because every penny went into dividens? UK.
Worlds oldest (and expensive) housing stock? UK.

We do not have any good politians anymore, doesn't matter which party, they've all, for the last 50 years, just carried on with Thatchers policies, regardless of the (continued) harm it's caused.

 

[Underdog]

Oh, how I hate that woman!

 

[toooooot]

Having moved from the Netherlands to the UK I have to say the PC part stores here are rather disappointing. Somehow the tiny Netherlands has like 30 stores whilst the UK has about a handful.
If ebuyer drops out I think it's pretty much just OCUK, Scan, awd-it, Curries and cclonline that's left.

There is something wrong with UK. Not economically even but on a bigger level. I won't make guesses, I do not live there. But I wonder to what extent what I hear in the news about it relates to the decline.

 

[Axeia]

There is something wrong with UK. Not economically even but on a bigger level. I won't make guesses, I do not live there. But I wonder to what extent what I hear in the news about it relates to the decline.

From having lived here for a while now my guess is that the countries (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales) are very much run from London with little regard for the rest. probably a healthy dose of corruption as well.

It was pretty bad pre-Brexit and a lot of the sentiment was because "immigrants are running the country into the ground". Which is funny because a lot of it was against countries like Poland which by a lot of metrics is better off than the UK nowadays.
Brexit killed off a bunch of companies and turned pretty much al economic forecasts sour. Topped it of with a lot of smaller stores biting the dust during COVID.

Now the still rich people in London are still making silly decisions thinking the UK is some kind of world power whilst lining their own pockets. The same as everywhere else I suppose, just a bit worse.

 

[LordVile95]

Honestly? What your're saying is obviously true, but there isn't any alternatives either, there isn't a single political party in the UK I would trust to actually make any difference either. The whole system needs a serious shake up (although I think it might be too late now).

Yet whenever another party got into power (Labour) they also haven't reversed anything, in some cases, doubled down on the existing tory policies.

Our water system being privatised has failed, obviously so, every single party in the commons have been shouting for months now that the government needs to plan to bring the whole industry back into the public domain, the only people against it? Whoever's in power at the time, this time, it's Labour.

Some of the most expensive electricity in the world? UK.
Crippling sewage and clean water systems because of 50 years of under-investment and chronically debt laiden companies because every penny went into dividens? UK.
Worlds oldest (and expensive) housing stock? UK.

We do not have any good politians anymore, doesn't matter which party, they've all, for the last 50 years, just carried on with Thatchers policies, regardless of the (continued) harm it's caused.

Unfortunately you require money to do things like privatise the water infrastructure and unfortunately it’s worth a lot more than the tories sold it off for. It’s a cyclical thing. Tories **** things up, labour comes in and can’t fix everything in 5 minutes, tories get voted back in because labour didn’t have long enough to sort out the mess. The longest labour had been in power was 10 years and was a success with living standards improving. The tories got in on the back of the global recession and pillaged the country for 14 years

 

[GrayDragon]

If you take London out of the UK, there’s almost no wealth here now.

It’s insane the population has let it get this bad to be honest, because of how passive normal British people are, I assume it’ll get quite a bit worse, then someone will blow up the Houses of Parliament, That old chestnut.

I wonder how much this has to do with separating from the EU. England isn't that big of a country and going it alone doesn't seem like a smart move.

 

[Burty117]

I wonder how much this has to do with separating from the EU. England isn't that big of a country and going it alone doesn't seem like a smart move.

Oh it was failing way before leaving the EU, but if you need to see the UK's downfall in graphs, just take a look from WW2 to today, and you'll see in 2008, everything stopped working, we've been completely stagnant and I'd argue, practically in a constant recession since.

I have a lot to say on the subject but the TL;DR is, unless we get some good leadership in who actually want to be British again and aren't just corrupt to the core, the UK won't be improving anytime soon.