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.'"
Re:Security? (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.'" "
Prediction: Multi-million dollar tablet heist within 6 months.
Seems to me that new fangled $1000+ Intel CPU is much more valuable and much more mobile.
Or those PCI-Express SSDs.
Or server-grade RAID controllers.
Why not be honest? Instead of calling it a "high-value area", call it "shit our stupid employees would like to steal" area.
Clueless guy visits a fulfillment center (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, Clueless guy visits an order fulfillment center. Not even a very interesting one. No Kiva robots like "soap.com", no incredibly fast processing on long orders for many tiny items like "digikey.com", no unusual outsourcing like UPS's laptop repair center.. Just an ordinary fulfillment center.
Maybe next he'll get out of Manhattan and visit a factory.
(Then again, "Pawn Stars" and "Storage Wars" are actual reality shows.)
Re:Clueless guy visits a fulfillment center (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, I actually found it interesting.
I've never been inside an "ordinary fulfillment center", and have indeed always wondered how it all works. Sometimes the mysteries behind mundane things are interesting.
Re:Who? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or just not from the US. They don't ship outside the US, remember. Oh and Puerto Rico.
More photos? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some more photos would have been good...you go all the way to New Jersey and you only took three pictures? That Pick to Light system sounded interesting, but a photo would have made it all clearer.
I thought that this story had already been done, and sure enough, it has [anandtech.com]. Of course I'm sure Newegg is happy to give a warehouse tour to any blogger who wants one. I'm not even sure the story I linked is the one I've seen before. Wait, maybe that was this one! [anandtech.com] Anyway, both of those had more photos.
Re:Different counter-measures for different threat (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree. There are always people who will attempt to milk the system even when they're happy. I've had a roommate like that.
I won't dispute that less employees will steal, but it certainly won't eliminate the problem.
Newegg - packing and shipping currently is horrid (Score:2, Insightful)
Well I used to be a newegg customer. But I got tired of shipments in which the hard drives where right next to the cardboard, and the packing material was on top of them. Yes they toss the item in the box, then put in the packing material.
The last straw was a speaker in the plastic clam shell packing that was shipped in one of the plastic film envelopes with NO packing at all.
Newegg used to be great. But I got tired of returning items at my cost because they choose not to pack the items well. When I factor in my time and return postage, newegg is a bad deal.