Inside Newegg NJ: A New Warehouse and Another Contest
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 20, 2008 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
For years I'd been visiting Newegg's facilities and I'd always commented, especially in the early days, on how I'd really wanted to take pictures of the facilities and do an article on them. Back when Newegg was much younger, a good portion of its success was due to the efficiencies of its warehouse in filling orders. As many companies in our industry tend to be, Newegg was quite shy and wouldn't let me so much as take a picture the first couple of times I visited them.
Finally in 2006, they opened up to the idea of documenting one of their warehouses. Armed with camera and notepad I toured Newegg's facilitiy in Los Angeles just around the time that it opened its first warehouse servicing the east coast in Tennessee. Fast forward to 2008 and Newegg had just recently unveiled its second east coast facility, this time in New Jersey.
With revenues well over $1B a year, Newegg is no longer the seemingly small operation it once was and the company is much less shy. While the brains behind the original warehouse design has since left the company, the New Jersey facility is an improved, more up-to-date version of what I saw back in LA in 2006.
There are far fewer actual people at the warehouse now thanks to even further automation and, yes, the goal is still to get your order to you within two days of leaving the facility regardless of shipping method. That's actually the whole purpose of building the NJ facility, so that customers on the east coast can actually get their orders within that two day target - even with ground shipping.
For those of you who remember the first article, not much has changed - everything i just a lot newer (and the warehouse is a lot quieter too). I told Newegg that if we were going to do another tour we had to do it exactly like last time, which meant that they needed to give away something special to AnandTech readers. The first time Newegg let me tour their facilities and setup a giveaway it was a very kind gesture, now it has become tradition. I'll get to exactly what you get to win and how in a little bit.
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CarVac - Thursday, February 26, 2009 - link
I live in the Metuchen, which is adjacent to this warehouse. Some stuff still takes 3 full days to arrive, though.Beenthere - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
Our company bought a lot of PC hardware from Newegg in their first 5 or so years of business. Then there was an obvious change in attitude, service, delivery and integrity at Newegg as confirmed by many of the original Newegg customers.Product reviews that were less than glowing were deleted - even those of products that the FTC later filed class action lawsuits against the company for due to product malfunction, defects in design and consumer fraud.
Newegg would regularly get channel CPU's a week or two before the mainstream consumer channel received their product and Newegg would inflate the prices $50 per CPU over the proper pricing. Then there was the "in-stock" confirmation of products and the "shipped" notices sent to customers when in fact the item WAS NOT IN STOCK and the item had NOT been shipped.
That was enough for our company to look elsewhere when many long time Newegg customers confirmed the same unscrupulous behavior. I'm sure that websites who generate ad revenue from Newegg are quite pleased to see Newegg's growth, even though it hasn't been a good experience for many Newegg customers. Big does NOT always equal Better, as Newegg has demonstrated time and time again. This won't change any fanboyz opinion, but at least people will know the facts and actual experiences of long time Newegg customers who left - and why they took their business to reputable e-tailers.
adrift02 - Sunday, May 25, 2008 - link
This type of article (supply/manufacturing side) doesn't seem to come very around often, but it's some interesting stuff!ryback - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
Interesting - really? Maybe if you work in a warehouse/logistics. I for one don't and found it incredibly boring. I skipped to the contest, found out I couldn't enter and wrote this.Trikat - Saturday, May 24, 2008 - link
Great to see their new facility in action.Two things I do not like.
1) UPS shipments constantly get banged to hell. I cringe everytime I have a delicate order like a hard drive. Just received a bigger than normal shipment yesterday and the side of the box was a bit mangled with a hole at the top of the box. I have been saying UPS sucks for quite some time (years) due to the roughly handling of shipments.
2) Recently I have been getting a few orders that have the "crumbs" part of the packing peanuts. It is extremely annoying to have to pick up all the small peanut crumbs since they love to float around and stick to things.
I haven't read all the comments yet, but in response to the hard drive bubblewrap+peanut combo, that is good enough. Bubblewrap is a bit bouncy and the peanuts allow a good enough buffer (since they shift around). The main reason for DOA/damaged hard drives is due to UPS and their rough handling of shipments.
Changing the type of packing peanuts can mean a huge swing in shipping supply cost. Do you know how much more starch/biodegradeable peanuts cost compared to regular peanuts? I would probably be more economical to go with another type of shipping material.
Zipzoomfly is an ok company, but they made several dramatic changes kind of recently.
1) No more free shipping. I thought the free shipping would have been droppped earlier, but it was good while it lasted.
2) Customer service really really sucks compared to Newegg. Almost all of the ZZF customer service reps are pissed off at customers, extremely bored, do not care, or something else, but anyways they really sound "bland". I also wanted to return a shipment of memory (refused delivery) and they slapped me with a 15% restocking fee. At that time I ordered a lot from both ZZF and Newegg, and this was going to be my first return. Soon after that it was less orders from ZZF since I could not get my point across to the lacky working at ZZF.
teknomedic - Sunday, May 25, 2008 - link
I'm unable to enter the contest... it always says "The text you entered for the image verIfication did Not match"...I've tried several times over the last two days with different computers... who can we contact or how do we enter the contest???????????
moiaujapon - Monday, May 26, 2008 - link
Exactly the same problem here, and it has continued for the last couple of days.----------------------
I'm unable to enter the contest... it always says "The text you entered for the image verIfication did Not match"...
I've tried several times over the last two days with different computers... who can we contact or how do we enter the contest???????????
MOFD - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
Same deal with me - the image captcha routine is not working. I've tried under Firefox/Linux and IE/Windows, with no luck.Cbob - Friday, May 23, 2008 - link
I bought from ZipZoom. I have no pressing need to pay 7% more for an item when I can get it elsewhere cheaper. (they even had free shipping at ZZ when I bought my MB, CPU & memory)Why couldn't the have been smart enough to goto Delaware and skip the sales tax completely.
And anyway, who wants to support a company that is in a pit like NJ?
Kendokan - Sunday, May 25, 2008 - link
Technically, if you don't pay the sales tax to your retailer, you are supposed to pay it instead to your state directly as a "use tax". In reality of course no one bothers, with certain exceptions.I know from experience that, in CA, the DMV is smart enough to make sure you pay the use tax when you purchase a car out of state and go to register it in CA for the first time.
So basically ZZ lets you cheat on your taxes and Newegg doesn't. :P