One-Stop Shopping & Reduced Shipping Costs

[liam.ada]

I find myself shopping at various websites: Sparkfun, Digikey, Zbasic, etc. So I end up paying substantial shipping costs. Here's and idea where all parties win... Since Adafruit very likley orders basic stock from Digikey, how about letting Adafruit customers piggy-back off those deliveries?

In other words, let's say I order Adafruit accels & Xbee Adapters, but I also want long range Xbee modules from Digikey not available at Adafruit. why not let Adafruit customers order Digikey items through Adafruit, and have those orders delivered with other shipments already coming through Adafruit. This will save customers shipping costs and/or enable customers to spend more on Adafruit products. The downside is longer delivery times, but I'd rather wait an extra week or two than pay more in shipping. Adafruit would be "virtually" bigger than Sparkfun while remaining lean, mean & innovative!

Liam

[Chuckz]

I'm imagining how this would work. They would probably have to hire someone to sort the orders and merge Digikey orders with Adafruit orders. That would mean your order would either be sitting around pulled until the Digikey order would be added. It would mean delays until the Digikey orders arrived. It would mean that someone would have to check and recheck the orders and possibilities of mistakes because they would be juggling two different processes of shipments. It means your order would be sitting on a workbench or skid while being processed.

Someone has to match up the purchase order with the packing slip. Lets say that 49 items came in and there were five backorders. They would have to pull the orders that were oldest first and distribute the items on a first come first serve basis. This is where it gets tricky depending on how they do their paperwork or orders are done and I don't know how they do their paperwork but the more paperwork involved, the more tricky it can become unless it is all done by computer. And companies rarely use the same numbering system and Digikey has thousands of components so it becomes a programming nightmare because their catalog which they won't be giving out anymore is as big as a phonebook. Could you expect them to synchronize catalogs with Adafruit and can you assume there are no mistakes in Digikey's catalog?

So lets say that the Adafruit item is ready to ship and the Digikey order is backordered for weeks. Would you be willing to wait for weeks while Digikey gets your stuff just so you can save on shipping? If the Digikey lead time is 16 weeks, would you be willing to wait that long? And would you expect Adafruit to tie up merchandise for 16 weeks which means they basically don't get paid until the merchandise ships unless you are okay with them charging and holding onto your money for 16 weeks while you don't have the merchandise. And whom do you blame when the order is late? If Digikey makes a mistake or is late then people tend to blame everyone.

And what do you expect Adafruit to do about potential returns? That becomes costly because if you order a product they don't stock, someone has to pay shipping to return it because no one wants it and $4.00 shipping for a .25 cent item can be problematic. The other thing is that you expect Digikey to hire someone to automate this process? It has to be worth it to all parties because they might have to spend time on the phone to facilitate this process and you have to pay someone to do this.

I don't speak for Adafruit but I'm just imaging how it would work.

[liam.ada]

Just so that everyone knows, I am not an Adafruit employee, nor do I speak for Adafruit. This is just an idea to save customers shipping costs. This is how the piggy-back service would work...

A Digikey portal would appear at the Adafruit site. Digikey selections would be combined with Adafruits. Opting for this service obviously means longer shipping times, but you'd save shipping costs - that's the tradeoff you accept. For me, I would accept a 1 to 2 week delay. And you would immediately know if an item is backordered. I would recommend against backorders, perhaps not allow that altogether.

At Adafruit industries, bulk Digikey shipments would be sorted as usual. I imagine EVERYTHING is logged and computerized. Why shouldn't it be. A customer's order would not be assembled (although Adafruit items would be virtually "held") until all items arrive so that its not sitting somewhere taking precious space.

As for returns, this piggy-back service could be setup to have the customer return Digikey items directly to Digikey.

Obviously this all breaks down if the time between regular Digikey shipments is very long. Again, this is just an idea and I do not speak for Adafruit, and I hope I don't get banished!

[philba]

I honestly don't see how this could work. Sorry, not trying to be negative but why would adafruit (or any place else) do this? Especially for free. Yes, I can see how it might increase customer loyalty but I can think of a lot of better ideas for customer loyalty. Like responding on their own forums to questions about the products (good job adafuit!, unlike sparky outfits). You pointed out the various customer service issues. And, the question any company should ask when adding a new service (or product or activity) is "does this support our core mission". And, frankly, I don't see how this idea does though I don't speak for AF.

For people and suppliers in the US, USPS first class shipping on light packages (less than a pound, I believe) isn't very expensive and takes a couple of days. I think every supplier I use has that. My last mouser shipment was $4-ish and maybe weighed 8 oz. So, they would be catering to people who are to save few bucks. I dunno, not really a good use of scarce resources.

[Chuckz]

Another option would be to set up an Adafruit store within Mouser or Digikey. You could buy Adafruit products there and get all the other stuff you want. It could give exposure to Adafruit so they might sell more stuff!