Final Words

There's not much you can conclude about touring a warehouse like Newegg's, there's no buying recommendation, there are no roadmaps to talk about, or upgrade paths to plan out. That being said, there are a couple things that we took away from the experience:

Quite possibly the most impressive part of the tour was the automated setup of the warehouse that Newegg's logistics team lead by VP, Howard Tong designed. Wherever possible the room for human error was minimized or completely removed, and the system itself is constantly learning from the way that Newegg's customers shop to further optimize itself as time goes on. The likelihood of your order getting damaged at Newegg's warehouse is very slim from what we saw, everything is handled very carefully and wrapped very meticulously. As we mentioned earlier, the potential for human error is as minimal as possible; we can only imagine what the Newegg folks would do to their warehouse if they had a few capable robots.

The other very impressive aspect of the tour was exactly how clean the warehouse was. While we wouldn't want to eat off the warehouse floor regardless how clean it was, we were quite impressed at how tidy the whole operation is.


From left to right: Howard Tong (VP), Anand and Ken Lam (Vice Chairman)

Given that the AnandTech readers were some of the most vocal in favor of Newegg in its early days, VP Howard Tong did have some nice things to say for you all:

"As you can see Anand, we put great effort into building a bulletproof infrastructure because we are committed to ensuring our customers have the best service. Sure, you can find smaller companies that may be a dollar or so cheaper, but at Newegg we decided we wanted to give our customer the best experience every time, and that is why we must invest into advanced systems that other companies do not have. We built all this with the customer specifically in mind.

Newegg has never before given the public this kind of exclusive look into its internal business proceses. At Newegg we have always loved the AnandTech reader. These are people whose deep love and understanding of technology help drive its innovation and advancement. In appreciation for this passion we will always do our best to give our tech customers the best selection, prices and service."

We hope this tour has been enjoyable and we'd like to thank Newegg for giving us the opportunity to present you with it. Now head on over to the entry form and try to win those Athlon 64 X2 4600s.

Shipping and the UPS/FedEx Debate
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  • jims23211 - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link

    As a FedEx employee, the info that NewEgg supplied you about a price hike was bogus. Fact is NewEgg received a substantial discount, but UPS decided to undercut FedEx, so NewEgg renegoitated their contract on a less volume. Last I heard from our Corporate Sales rep, Newegg finally realized their mistake (a huge amount of damage returns and missed/lost deliveries by UPS) and is trying to get their deal back with FedEx, good luck...

    Jim
  • NullSubroutine - Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - link

    aww poor fed ex, do they want a sucker? im sure its not just one sided to fex being innocent.
  • yacoub - Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - link

    Considering FedEx is the better shipper to use most of the time...
  • hergieburbur - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link

    I agree, I have shopped Newegg for years, and I never once had any problem receiving my order extremely quickly until they switched to UPS. First time I ordered that was sent UPS took 2-3 days more, held up by shipping. Personally, I miss Fedex Ground.
  • overclockingoodness - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link

    I'm guessing that's based on Newegg's dealings with UPS. A shipping company better be competent if it wants to handle 25K orders a day. I guess Newegg has created a benchmark for making sure shipping companies are doing their job well (so has Amazon.com).
  • jfunk - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link

    I've always loved Newegg since the beginning. Almost always within a couple bucks of the cheapest price and service has been great the few times I've had to contact them.

    I just hope not too many of my shipments start comming out of the new TN warehouse, it takes longer to get to me than the stuff from NJ.
  • overclockingoodness - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link

    Yes, that's Anand in the picture. :)
  • AndrewChang - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link

    Hey Anand, that wouldn't happen to be you by any chance would it? Haha, Goodstuff...
  • PClark99 - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link

    the link to enter the contest is not working for me.
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - link

    Leave the contest link broken! All the n00bs won't be able to figure out how to re-construct the correct URL and won't be able to enter! More chances for the rest of us.

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