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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."
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Find the lowest prices or Buy it from Amazon for $638.98
Best investment ever.
shouldn't this be under the Special Advertising Section?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"Established in 2001, Newegg has quickly become a household name among AnandTech readers. They originally won the hearts of many readers by offering extremely competitive prices and keeping customer service a top priority. Since their humble beginnings the company has grown tremendously, with net sales in 2005 of approximately $1.3 billion, a 30% increase over the prior year. Newegg currently stocks over 60,000 different products and ships up to 25,000 orders per day, 98% of them within 24 hours."
Does this not scream advertisement to anybody else? While it is somewhat cool to see what happens once orders placed, this stinks of a "sponsored article"
Seriously "A pallet is a wooden or plastic platform that can be picked up using a forklift; palletized cargo is cargo placed on a pallet, which is how Newegg's inventory is shipped to them." is considered a story?
"Recently AnandTech got a chance to tour some of Microsoft's offices. Established in 1981, many AnandTech readers will be familiar with Microsoft for offering innovative products, pushing the envelope in the software industry, and their advantage over Linux products in terms of TCO."
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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
HDGary secures my bank
As someone who works next door to Buy.com's corporate office (they're in 85, we're in 65, effectively next door) - I'd rather see their corporate office than the warehouse. Come on, how many Ferraris are in the parking lot?
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Still no USPS shippment. I still haven't figured out why NewEgg isn't offerring USPS shippment as an option. Surely they say, "Free Shipping" as some kind of marketing term, but we all know that's not entirely true. In my experience with USPS, especially Priority Mail and light weight shippment below 5 lbs, it's been cheaper, reliable, and no hassle; beating out on FedEx and UPS.
Or maybe it's just me having bad experience with UPS and FedEx delivery.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
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.
When Firefly premiered, I submitted a gushing story to Slashdot. (I had seen a bootleg of the pilot, and had been blow away by it; the actual series was rather less exciting.) There must have been 20 posts by people who were convinced that I was a sock puppet in the employ of Fox. None of them bothered to check my post history.
Sock puppets do exist. I've even been fooled by them. But in a consumer culture where people where company logos as a "personal statement", you shouldn't be suprised to see a little uncritical praise now and then.
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.
,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.
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
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.
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.
Wouldn't that be a "frost pist" then, not a "frist post"? ;-)
But since its inception, what seperated Newegg from every other low-cost web retailer was the organization of their site. If you want to browse products, it's so freakin' easy pick a category/subcategory and narrow the choices down based on features you are looking for. I can't believe other sites haven't gotten this right yet (Mwave is okay).
For example, Buy.com has great prices for some items, especially when a heavy item qualifies for free shipping. But try browsing Buy.com's selection of 1GB DDR2 memory kits (2x512MB) or their selection of motherboards with socket 939, microATX form factor, nForce4 chipset, and 4 dimm slots. At Newegg, it's a snap.
The first time I browsed Newegg, the categorization of their inventory was as impressive to me as Yahoo's.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
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.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
Having frequently purchased things from Newegg.com and been relatively satisfied with being close enough to one of their warehouses to get overnight ground shipping on the cheap, I was recently horrified to discover that they have quietly changed the way they offer shipping in order to pad their own pockets. In case you haven't noticed, Newegg.com no longer offers UPS Ground as a shipping option. They have instead created a new service called "UPS 3-day Guaranteed," which, if you read the terms, basically says that you have to pay for UPS 3-Day Select, but will still get ground shipping if you are close enough to receive your order in 3 days or less. For people like me, that equates to a tripling of shipping charges and nothing else. Newegg.com could not be reached for comment as of the writing of this story. Am I the only one who is outraged?
This article is clearly a promotion for newegg.com -- I mean, they even promote a freakin contest over at new egg for a Athlon 64 4600+ ! http://promotions.newegg.com/NEPro/AnandTech//inde x.html
I've worn a lot of hats over the years, including as an end user with a large university (the guy who needs stuff) and later as a guy working at a vendor who sells stuff. Here's the scoop.
As an end user, you've usually got four purchasing options:
1) Petty cash. For very tiny things. Pointless to this discussion, and still involves lots of careful receipt-handling rules.
2) School-issued credit cards. Only people way up the food chain get to use these. Purchasing agents in the school's procurement office get to use them, and sometimes people who work in travel offices, or that coordinate events, etc., do, or deans and whatnot. Generally there are very tight rules about how these can be used, and that's usually never for things like a shiny new computer monitor or the like.
3) Small, "casual" Purchase Orders. Usually these are limited to a few hundred dollars or so. The end user has to request the use of them, but then gets handed something more or less like a blank ticket that has a spending limit on it. Many vendors won't take these because they're not already assigned, by the school's procurement office, to the vendor... which means the there may be bumps in the road getting it actually paid.
4) Serious POs. These are the ones that come out of the procurement office after the purchasing agent has shopped around to make sure the end user is making a rational request, after some bids (either over the phone, or more formally on paper) have been reviewed, and so on. If you're wondering why these take so long, it's because when a state school (which is really the state government) decides to buy something, there are a jillion rules at play. Has the vendor been filing state taxes correctly? Has the vendor been keeping up with state regulations on hiring quotas, manadatory cardboard recycling, health insurance regs, etc? Yes: purchasing agents spending bigger-ticket amounts of tax money have to check ALL of that crap. And you can only imagine what happens if some of the funds involved happen in to include some federal support for the school's program(s). Suddenly the vendor has to pass all sorts of federal tests, as well. All of that has to be established before the PO is cut to the vendor. And if there's some comparison shopping to be done (this is usually required by law), the purchasing agent may have to actually advertise that the school's about to spend $50,000 on some capital item, and allow a certain amount of time to pass so that all potential vendors can respond with a proposal.
Now: suppose you're a vendor. Think of the time you've got to invest in presenting a friendly face to that process. Then, imagine that the school's policy is to review all shipments before even beginning to start the process of paying the bill to the vendor... but the purchasing agent can't certify that the shipment even GOT to the school, with the right stuff in the box, in good shape, until the end user (and/or his supervisor, dean, etc) signs off on the circulating paperwork. Never mind if the product has some OSHA issues, or HAZMAT considerations to slow all of that down. Finally, the end user's receipt paperwork gets back to the purchasing agent, who then sends the paperwork to the school's accounting people, who have to match it up with the filed invoice from the vendor, and then they schedule a payment for some number of days in the future... thus giving them time to check whether the vendor is or is not on some shit-list about some other transaction having gone well or poorly, thus holding up the payment.
You get the idea. The life cycle on these things is horrific, and vendors have to really want to do that business, and be willing to float the money, usually for months, before getting paid. If even ONE aspect of the end user's paperwork isn't just right, the vendor often does NOT get paid. Now, combine all of that with an industry like selling motherboards at very low margins... and remember that the company (like Newegg) has to honor (or even beat) their advertised
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.