Inside Newegg's East Coast Distribution Center 112
MrSeb writes "Did you know that Newegg is the second largest e-tailer in the U.S., after Amazon? Perhaps building your own computer isn't dead yet! Matthew Murray was recently invited to take a tour of the Newegg east coast distribution center and see what goes on behind the scenes. 'The 350,000-square-foot Edison warehouse not only houses some 15,000 SKUs of products, it also ships as many as 15,000 packages a day ... All of the different products the company carries are sorted both by category and how easy they are to move: Obviously, HDTVs are more cumbersome and difficult to remove safely than processors. Some mobile equipment, such as laptops, netbooks, and tablets, are stored in a special “high-value” area behind a chain-link fence that’s been erected within the warehouse itself.'"
Different counter-measures for different threats (Score:5, Informative)
"Some mobile equipment, such as laptops, netbooks, and tablets, are stored in a special 'high-value' area behind a chain-link fence thatâ(TM)s been erected within the warehouse itself."
Prediction: Multi-million dollar tablet heist within 6 months.
That fence isn't there to keep you or me out. The walls and doors of the building do that. (Presumably. I haven't been to NewEgg's warehouses myself.)
The fence is to protect the products from employees and other staffers already in the building. Only the more trust-worthy employees can get into the cage. The minimum-wage semi-transient workers are kept out. It's a fairly common technique -- most retail stores do something similar. Certain items (typically small, high-value, and popular) are frequent targets of employee theft, and that's where that stuff goes.
Re:I'm more interested in their California locatio (Score:5, Informative)
Those guys are slower than snails.
Hope they treat their employees better than Amazon, though!
A bit out of date now, but Anandtech [anandtech.com] did a similar warehouse tour at the California location back in 2006. And one at the New Jersey location [anandtech.com] back in 2008.
Re:Different counter-measures for different threat (Score:5, Informative)
As a former retail drone, I must confirm this as the case 25 years ago.
We had the candy room and the car stereo room.
The car stereo room for obvious reasons, and the candy room for the reason that it's all too easy to just cruise on by and grab something yummy and not even write it in the shrinkage book - keep honest people honest.
--
BMO
Re:Who? (Score:5, Informative)
NewEgg (and to some degree mWave) is the cheapest place to order all the computer parts you need to build your rig. Good selection, fast service, but what makes NewEgg stand out from all the others is 2 things:
a) You can see the 5 star break-down ratings from actual customers
b) You can not only see the total number of reviews, but sort products by "most reviews" AND read each and every mini summary from customers
i.e.
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=22&name=AMD-Motherboards&Order=REVIEWS [newegg.com]
We see that:
The "ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 AMD 890FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard", has
avg. 4/5 eggs (stars)
485 customer reviews
Clicking on the eggs we see
5 eggs = 71% (285)
4 eggs = 15% (60)
Which means 86% think this is a great product. Translation: For a high-end AMD system, you can't go wrong with this product!
Before I order anything I _always_ see what is the most popular item AND read the reviews to see if there any issues other builders are having with it. Wouldn't you like to know BEFORE hand if the OEM drivers are buggy?
Buying a product with only 1 star means you are probably buying junk.
Their category organization for finding products is good too.
Hope this helps
newegg.com.cn (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Beijing.
I would love for a similar tour of newegg.com.cn's facilities to be done. Then maybe I could understand why none of the Rosewill (Newegg house brand) products (designed in Taiwan, made in China) can only be bought in the USA and are not available under any circumstances in China.
Or maybe I could understand why products made in China and available in the USA for competitive prices are frequently listed on newegg.com.cn for up to 2x their USA$ price. For USA products that must be shipped back to China, ok, I can understand that... but Lenovo??? Power supplies (with meaningful quality), graphics cards (of reasonable performance- requiring a fan to keep from overheating is a typical breakpoint), and motherboards (that aren't more than 2 years old) cost anywhere from 50% to 200% more than they do in the USA. Only drives (optical/mechanical), CPUs, and RAM are within a 5% premium over USA prices.
And the most fun thing is that as the RMB appreciates (6.3411RMD/1USD this past week, it was 6.75RMB/1USD when I first moved here), none of these products get cheaper in RMB. I get my sister to buy things in the USA and have them shipped here and still save money, unless I need it in a hurry, and then I go to taobao.com for reasonable prices but a much more random user experience.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Informative)
NewEgg is hardly cheap. There are plenty of cheaper places on the Internet, let alone brick and mortar stores out there that at worst match NewEgg's pricing
....
NewEgg's selection sucks.
ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT.
Re:Clueless guy visits a fulfillment center (Score:4, Informative)
I've often wondered with McMaster's warehouses (what are now called fulfillment centers) are like.
Today, there are warehouses, fulfillment centers, and distribution centers, plus many other types of logistic facilities. A warehouse is mostly storage. A distribution center is an intermediate stop between suppliers and retail stores. A fulfillment center does order picking for customers.
Sears invented the fulfillment center between 1896 and 1906. Their mail order business was successful, but as the business grew the order handing process choked. They figured out how to do order fulfillment efficiently from a broad inventory in huge volume, without computers. They built a 40-acre facility in Chicago, called "The Works", which operated until 1993 when Sears finally exited catalog sales. The "schedule system" which did that is quite clever. In fulfillment, the obvious solution is O(N*M), where N is the number of orders and M is the number of orderable items. This does not scale well. Sears got that down to O(N*log(M)) and dominated mail order for most of a century.