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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SWEET!

[DrEldarion]

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Find the lowest prices or Buy it from Amazon for $638.98

Best investment ever.

hmmm

[larry bagina]

shouldn't this be under the Special Advertising Section?

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]

Typically their prices are not the best on pricewatch but they're close, and their service is great. Most places that are the absolute cheapest on pricewatch have shitty service, should you ever have to return anything. I got a case from Newegg that was dented and they just let me keep it.

Lots of people bitch about service, but when push comes to shove they'll forego service to save a few bucks and service oriented businesses will lose out to discounters. I see Newegg as a great compromise of good service at the best prices possible, and give them almost all of my hardware business as a result.

I think you'd find that looking up the resellerratings.com listing for most companies selling stuff at the very cheapest prices, they don't compare to newegg.

All that said, this article looks like a cheesy, paid-for fluff piece.

Re:New Egg not one of my faves

[dtdns]

I used to work for Wal-Mart a number of years ago. Their system is called SMART (IIRC, that is Systematic Merchandising and Applied Retail Technology). Their process is known as "perpetual inventory" and for good reason. The computers know how much inventory is in the store at any given time (like any good POS), as well as how many will fit on the shelf, how many come in a case, etc. When it sees that the "on hand" count is getting to the point where the shelf cannot be kept full from overstock, it orders more. It also knows the inventory levels at the warehouse, and how long the delivery will take, so it can make some predictions that result in stock arriving just as the shelf is no longer full. The system also takes into account sales that are coming up and adjusts the order amounts accordingly. Department manager and some floor associates have the ability to manually adjust the on-hand inventory counts, so you can trick it into sending you more of an item if you want to do a department special. It does a lot more than that, and on paper it should result in an almost fully stocked store and and pretty empty back stock room every morning after the previous night's trucks have been worked out to the floor.

In practice, however (at least at the store I worked at), the on-hand counts were always off due to managers screwing up, shrinkage, warehouse mishaps, etc. The result was that some items were almost always out of stock, and others were piled to the ceiling in the back room because the system kept ordering more when we obviously didn't need any more. To complicate matters, you have holidays and seasonal items to account for, and some departments are somewhat independant of the rest of the store (shoes and jewelry come to mind).

And that's just at the store level. I can't imagine what kind of magic lurks at the distribution centers.

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.

Get a life, dude

[fm6]

Businesses have always trolled for fluffy, friendly journalism. Doesn't make it an advertisement.

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.

Re:Looks fishy to me.

[harlows_monkeys]

eriously "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?

No, that is considered a "sentence". People called "writers" put together groups of related sentences to form "paragraphs", and groups of related "paragraphs" are what is considered a story.

Re:Looks fishy to me.

[wilburdg]

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?

Now, now- don't be so quick to judge.

I found the statement, 'the automated box maker makes a lot of boxes' to be quite insightful.

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:Should I feel guilty

[Benley]

It's like pure untouched snow, just waiting to be pissed on. And I say that with the best of intentions, as every year, I spell out /. in the snow.

Wouldn't that be a "frost pist" then, not a "frist post"? ;-)

Newegg quietly triples shipping charges

[EmagGeek]

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?