A London-headquartered distributor of electronic components, automation and industrial products, with a main UK distribution centre in Corby, serving engineers who design, build and maintain equipment.
RS Group, formerly Electrocomponents, is a distributor. That means it does not mainly make things; it buys products from other manufacturers and gets them quickly to the engineers, factories and workshops that need them. It describes itself as an "omni-channel provider of products and services" for people who design, build and maintain industrial equipment. RS says it stocks over 800,000 products from more than 2,500 suppliers, serves over one million customers and ships over 50,000 parcels a day across 36 countries. Its range covers electronic components, automation and control equipment, test and measurement tools and engineering consumables.
The business began in 1937 as Radiospares. Its founders, J. H. Waring and P. M. Sebestyen, started in a lock-up garage in Maida Vale, London, supplying spare parts to radio repair shops. It began selling electronic components in 1954, became RS Components in 1971 and launched its website in the late 1990s. In 2022 it renamed itself RS Group plc, and in 2023 it unified the group under one brand. Its own-brand range, RS PRO, has over 80,000 products. DesignSpark is its engineering community, which began with free PCB (circuit board) design software in 2010. OKdo focuses on single-board computers and the internet of things, and RS has been a major distributor of the Raspberry Pi since 2012.
RS states its purpose as "Making amazing happen for a better world", aiming to inspire present and future generations to make a lasting difference. Its vision is "Becoming first choice for all our stakeholders". Its shared values are teamwork and trust, empowerment and ownership, care for its impact on people and communities, and adaptability and innovation, summed up as "We are one team, who deliver brilliantly, doing the right thing to make every day better!" Those are the company's own words from its about page. It also runs an environmental and social plan called "For a Better World" with four global goals for 2030.
In the UK, the group is headquartered in London. Its distribution centre in Corby, Northamptonshire (Lammas Road, NN17 5JF) opened in 1984, and a second centre in Nuneaton opened in 1995. A UK supply-chain directory lists the group as working under nine brands, including RS PRO, DesignSpark, IESA and Needlers, and holding quality and safety standards such as ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001. Its UK customers include oil and gas, power and offshore wind firms. We did not find a UK-only headcount, and the list of other UK sites was not published on the pages we read.
RS describes its people as a team of experts who help customers with design, buying, stock management and maintenance, and says its culture favours fresh thinking and an inquisitive, pioneering mindset. It also supports STEM education, offering lesson plans and projects for students from primary school through university. A distributor of this kind employs warehouse and logistics teams, technical advisers, buyers, software and digital specialists, and engineers who build the DesignSpark and OKdo products. The leadership named on Wikipedia is Baroness Rona Fairhead as chair and Simon Pryce as chief executive; check the company site for the current team.
Website: uk.rs-online.com
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