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    Our Story

    From humble beginnings to the global company we are today, we’ve been on an incredible journey, but the best is yet to come.

    In 1937, J H Waring and P M Sebestyen established a company called Radiospares Limited, supplying radio repair shops with spare parts. The business began selling electronic components in 1954 and rebranded as RS Components in 1971.

    For over 80 years, we have been providing products and solutions to engineers, making it easy for our customers to do business and saving them time and money.

    Today, we are a global omni-channel solutions partner for industrial customers and suppliers who are involved in designing, building or maintaining industrial equipment and facilities.

    We aim to offer our customers unrivalled choice of product technologies, solve problems with innovative solutions and deliver a world-class customer experience.

    We stock more than 500,000 industrial and electronic products, sourced from over 2,500 leading suppliers and provide a wide range of value-added solutions to over one million customers.

    With operations in 32 countries, we trade through multiple channels and ship over 50,000 parcels a day.

    Our Purpose

    Our purpose is ‘making amazing happen’. We plan to inspire a more sustainable world through education and innovative solutions that improve lives. Through a range of projects and activities we’re supporting the engineers of today and tomorrow, ensuring that they have all they require – from a broad product range to a number of core services that help to add real value to our customers.

    Through our Discovery Hub we have collated a wide range of useful guides to help you get the most from your equipment, applications and projects. We’ve also brought to life a selection of interesting facts and figures covering a wide range of topics, through engaging infographics.

    For procurement professionals, we have created Connected Thinking to provide valuable insight and expertise to both businesses and individuals involved in the sectors we support. RS doesn’t simply supply customers with products; we collaborate with organisations to help identify better working practices that will help them to achieve sustainable efficiencies.

    We want to nurture and encourage the future engineering workforce by providing everyone, from primary school ages through to University students, with access to STEM based lesson plans and projects to develop their skills and appetite for all things engineering.