A Look Inside Newegg

An anonymous reader writes "AnandTech has an interesting look inside Newegg's 180,000 square foot facility. Effectively, they followed the path of an order after it was soon placed online. AnandTech was able to get a tour of their facilities before, but this is the first time they allowed them to publish any photos."

Comments

New Egg not one of my faves

[queenb**ch]

If I'm buying for myself, it's probably not going to be from New Egg. I can usually get the same stuff elsewhere on the net for less money.

If I'm buying for work, I've got a list of approved vendors from the bean counters- *eye roll* and New Egg isn't nearly stuffy enough and hasn't bought any of the bean counters lunch often enough to make it on their list (just my best guess at how vendors are selected).

It's nice that they have wicked cool facility, but if you really want to see some supply chain stuff in action, visit Wal-mart. Now you can order any thing off the Walmart web site and have it delivered free to your local Walmart. Show me how those orders are processed, and as much as I hate Walmart, you'll definitely have my attention.

2 cents,

Queen B

Re:New Egg not one of my faves

[Anonymous Coward]

Wal-Mart has over a hundred distribution centers and warehouses scattered across the nation; Newegg's warehouse is 180,000 square feet but the smallest Wal-Mart centers are over 400,000. Most of them are around 1.5 million and some are over 2 million.

I don't doubt this is true, and I would just like to add, this figure shocked me, check this out:

"Wal-Mart [...] has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States."

[source -- an interesting article itself, and just Google for lots more cites.]

But just think about that! Wal-Mart buys 10% of everything China exports to the US.
Here is another perspective:

"Wal-Mart has a very close relationship with China," says Duke University Professor Gary Gereffi. "China is the largest exporter to the U.S. economy in virtually all consumer goods categories. Wal-Mart is the leading retailer in the U.S. economy in virtually all consumer goods categories. Wal-Mart and China are a joint venture."

[This is from a pbs.org source.]

Return policy

[st3v]

Newegg's Return Policy stinks. They charge 15% restocking fees, and if you get a defective item, you have to pay return shipping. They are a big enough company to afford not charging restocking fees. I try not to purchase from Newegg whenever possible. They are not a good deal anymore anyways.

Re:Newegg will not do business with our school...

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to know the reason why they don't accept POs from schools? They're a major fricking pain in the ass to deal with, you don't get money right away, thirdly and most importantly, they're a major freaking pain in the ass to deal with.

I worked for a university, and I was was tasked with purchasing lots of tools when it was decided we needed to upgrade. I bought up over $350,000 dollars of welders and supplies, metal working equipment, machine tools (including a good sized 3 axis CNC mill, a small 5 axis mill ,a couple small CNC lathes) and basically everything a bunch of engineering students need for their various projects... Basically, everyone thought it would be awesome if we could almost built an entire small turbine engine in house... So, yeah, that's what i went after.. Aside from some precision grinding, and some bearings, etc, it was certianly feasible.

Two months later, when all of this stuff is going strong and we need consumables, I couldn't get anything from anywhere I dealt with previously. The university lost $200,000 worth of POs from various companies, and they companies didn't complain loudly, because quite frankly, we were a drop in the bucket compared to what they were used to. I'm sure the shit would have really hit the fan later... But I had enough of that position anyhow, and this was the last straw.

What I'm saying is that even though you might not have a hard time internally within your school, some companies take a very harsh stance when you go to purchase anything from them, simply because they have had hard times.

What ever happened to 2AM, $3 overnight shipping??

[green pizza]

Believe it or not, this isn't a troll. From about 1993 - 1999 there were dozens of printed catalogs that offered overnight (technically same-day) shipping if you placed your order before 2AM EST. For $3 your package was delivered by Airborne Express (now DHL) by 10AM that SAME DAY! I ordered many computer parts over the phone around the 2AM deadline and had them in my hand just 8 hours later. And this was to Fargo, North Dakota. Amazing IMHO.

The first time I took advantage of this crazy fast, crazy cheap shipping was when I bought my Newton PDA in 1994. I remember placing my order around 11 PM and paying with the Newton the next morning just after breakfast. I think I ordered it from MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse. This was many years before the dot-com boom, so I'm still a little baffled at how so many companies were able to update print 200+ page catalogs every month and still offer such awesome shipping.

As far as I can tell, this all ended around the time of the dot com bubble burst. What I don't really understand is why. Or why they didn't just up the shipping charge to $6 or downgrade to overnight instead of overnight-priority shipping. 4 PM the next day isn't a whole lot worse than 10 AM the next day.

I miss those days. Now it seems like NewEgg's 1 - 2 day order turnaround + freeish FedEx 3-day shpping is the best I can find in the same price ballpark. I can usually order from NewEgg on a Monday morning, opt for the Free to $5 shipping, and have the item by Thursday afternoon. Good but still nothing like the 8 hour delivery I experienced for most of the 1990s. Now with online ordering, better tracking/sorting, and greater package delivery competition you would think that $3 - $7 overnight shipping would still be a possibility. Or at the very least, give me back the 2AM cutoff again instead of this 5PM sillyness.

Re:What ever happened to 2AM, $3 overnight shippin

[great om]

I hate when they won't just leave the package. I can understand if they'd like to get something in writing saying that they're not liable for the package once it is out of their hands, but let me fax them some standard form, which they can keep on file. No one in my house is ever home during business hours, and my wife's job doesn't allow personal packages to be sent to her work address, and my job has such over active security (everything has to be hand checked, and put through a metal detector/xray by security), that there are packages I wouldn't and can't have come to work.

Around here, UPS never just drops the package --except when it is an amazon super-saver (although fedex will most of the time), I will actually not shop at online stores who's shippers have given me the "will try again X# of times" slip --I'm simply not going to be home.