What a beautiful, functional, perfect e-commerce site. After so much frustration looking for parts and tools at big box store web sites, this is fresh like a sea breeze. Sold, 100%.
In fact, I was just browsing Home Depot for some tool hooks, but I think I'll buy them from this place instead.
The website design itself is very similar to how other ecommerce sites used to be 20 years ago, at least in my part of the world. Unfortunately we seem to have lost a lot of the simplicity over the years.
I've never emailed them but I have called them on a few occasions. Somehow they pick up before it even rings once. And it's a real person, not a phone tree. Pretty remarkable.
They are really fast to get back to you and will tell you what stuff is which can be helpful in certain situations where the material or vendor might matter.
It's a lot less common than you think, especially by email. In my spare time, I work on motorcycles, and I often have to source specific parts or - in rare cases - reach out to a local machine shop. I've given up on email, a phone call is often the only way to get a response.
When you work in the tech industry, you get accustomed to everything being done by text, but the rest of the world isn't so convinced :)
This article is also completely glossing over another reason to use them: Their shipping is somehow insanely fast.
Almost everything is next-day delivery, even for standard shipping. They've somehow got their logistics COMPLETELY nailed. I believe they have their own agreements with USPS/FedEx/etc...
McMaster is generally not the cheapest, but they're almost always the fastest and the easiest.
Indeed, even in rural parts of the country orders placed by 4-6pm still arrive next day[0]. This saves calendar days on projects; its often not till 4 or 5 that the full list of missing fittings/parts/tools comes together.
[0]Sometimes you need to spring for air shipping if you are in the sticks.
Plenty of dedicated shipping companies do exactly the same thing (if you don't pay for next day then they'll deliberately delay it so it takes 5 days or whatever you paid for), it's got nothing to do with being owned by a retailer or not.
this definitely used to be a thing until like... early 2010s. Back then I completely recall watching tracking for some items and they'd accept it and run it a couple hops and then... it'd just sit for 3 days or whatever. Fedex said it was gonna be 5 business days? Then don't expect to see it in less than 5 business days.
I've seen both Fedex and UPS do it, but in some places it seemed like one or the other.
I don't see it all that much anymore though. Definitely post-covid but tbh it's really been years since I've seen it. I can't tell how much of that is vs me moving away from a rural home (might be more likely to attempt "batching" deliveries in rural areas due to distance) vs an actual change in behavior here.
It may also be the shift to JIT logistics too - you have to have a big warehouse or something to hold them. Even if it's sitting in a trailer somewhere, you still have to have a big lot to hold them. These are costs that are probably not justified for the return of "lol make customers more amicable to pay more for better shipping", the conversion there is ~0% for the most part. The 5-day window is nice for the courier if they need it of course, holiday is madness in the mail business (and payments, retail, etc) from what I know, but if your throughput is significantly lower than your mail volume then you've got problems, so you need to be able to ship it through in 2-3 days on average anyway, and if you can do that... why pay for someplace to hold onto it when we can JIT it right onto a truck?
Today it seems like if your shipping drops off for a couple days it's usually lost. I had one package stop tracking and then bounce 100 miles in the wrong direction, another where it stopped tracking and then showed up with box damage, etc, but haven't seen it just hang out like the old days.
Amazon, too, will play games with shipping windows... on a thunderbolt hub, they set a delivery date like two weeks out, sold and shipped by amazon. Like a week later I see a ship notice, cool it'll be here soon right? Lol nope, shipped UPS Surepost, so they got their week out of it.
> It may also be the shift to JIT logistics too...
I wonder if they are applying ML to the distribution batching and coming up with probabilities to each route's batching efficiency. With enough detailed delivery transaction data, they could identify the probability of it being worth holding the package in the warehouse or trailer to batch it, versus sending it on its way.
I can’t imagine a company wasting money on this. Distro facility space is money. Especially these days with all networks stressed. They may delay to optimize a route with more stops, or prioritize guaranteed shipping dates. But being punitive doesn’t make financial sense.
Compared to Amazon, MMC has a very small number of SKUs, inventory that never goes stale, and prices that are only affordable in the context of B2B transactions. It’s not a comparable service.
DigiKey eliminated everything except next day air for small packages some years ago because it was too expensive to have two different SKUs for shipping small orders in their system. B2B is weird.
Next day delivery is so common for B2B that many times it's the only way to order. I won a free DMM from Keysight and while it took a month for it to be actually shipped, they shipped it next day from Malaysia to the US when it finally did. Like you guys made me wait weeks for it, I could have waited another week for snail mail.
I made a small order from Digi-Key last month and they offered UPS ground, FedEx ground and USPS. I don’t think I’ve ever not been offered budget shipping from them.
But B2B is weird. If I need my employer to ship me something that I’ll use next month, I am hard pressed to get them to ship slower than 2nd day air.
Depending on the nature of the business, it’s not uncommon to have negotiated rates for 2nd day shipping that are really good, and essentially retail counter rates for ground. Sometimes that makes 2nd day service cheaper than ground for a lot of destinations. It’s weird.
Huh? I order from Digikey all the time and usually I get my packages FedEx because it's the same price as USPS. When USPS is cheaper, I select that because I'm in the same state so it typically gets here the next day anyway.
Amazon does much better then Wal-Mart, but in either case I’ve found the best experience is to only buy products being sold by Amazon or Wal-Mart directly. I love the idea of facilitating small businesses selling through Amazon and Wal-mart, but in practice the feature is just abused by fraudsters, scammers, and disaster profiteers. The few legit sellers on either platform often don’t deal well with customer inquiries or returns. This is why we can’t have nice things.
I’ve had mostly good experiences with Aliexpress though you have to read the fine print on everything very carefully - I think most people would have a lot of problems with that. There have been a few times I ordered electronic components and received ladies handbags or, hilariously, a toddler size leather miniskirt. I did get a refund in all those cases but it was a multi week process.
I did think it was pretty funny that the same tweezers CVS sells for $7 a piece in midtown Manhattan costs 5/$1 on Aliexpress. Only difference is the CVS tweezers are available immediately whereas I had to wait 20 days to receive the ones from Aliexpress - though I more or less have a lifetime supply now. :)
Perhaps. But all the more reason for Amazon to streamline it's UI and UX. Instead it's consistently a textbook case of TMI. If you're not paying close attention you're likely to miss something.
Maybe you didn't see the Footnote:
Footnotes
[1] "Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company. Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn't let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page. They were like millions of his own precious children. So they're all still there, and Larry is not." https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
>On the other hand, Amazon delays orders on purposes if you aren't a Prime member.
I'm not so sure about this. I'm not a prime member and I frequently get orders delivered before the estimated delivery date. On the other hand I also see instances where amazon takes suspiciously long to ship something. A charitable explanation might be that their logistics capacity (eg. planes or vans) is limited, so if you're not a prime member you get deprioritized.
I’m absolutely sure that there is an amazon FIFO for orders that sometimes get delayed days in shipping in order not to build up an unnecessary queue that wouldn’t get emptied for pickup. Probably has a lot to do with them running their own logistics.
At my college town around 2013, any prime delivery would always take a day longer than it was supposed to. Saturday delivery wasn't common there at the time so you had to get your order in by Wednesday morning at the latest otherwise you'd be waiting until Monday.
It’s nuts. I’ve had mcmaster packages come from far enough away overnight that there were hardly enough minutes for UPS to drive it this far. But definitely not flown judging by the terminals it went through.
> They've somehow got their logistics COMPLETELY nailed.
In addition, you can generally get a useful human on the bloody phone at these companies!
The delivery priority is because their customers are losing real money until that shipment of parts to repair their production line comes in. If those parts don't come in when they're supposed to, the people who cut checks are gonna start yelling.
However, I tend to prefer MSC (https://www.mscdirect.com/) over McMaster if I can--especially for machine tooling.
It really feels like McMaster really relies on the fact that they can be a "one stop shop" so my experience has been that things tend to be slightly more expensive and with "servicable" quality and with "very good" delivery. However, with a bit of Internet-Fu, you can generally find a better version of the McMaster product at the same price point.
Really? Admittedly I haven't used them in earnest since before the plague ...
However, a quick look shows them to be dead on price for Mitutoyo dial calipers. Boring heads look a bit more expensive than I remember. Milling bits seem normal price-wise as well.
Who is your go to? Machine tooling is always expensive and I'm always looking for places that are cheaper.
They're alright for the Mitutoyo calipers, it looks like.
Kurt DX6: $650 on AllIndustrial, $737 on MSC.
Bison 7-866-0800 (a 3-jaw 8" forged steel chuck that I happen to own): $1090 through USA Bison retailers like Ajax, $1376 through MSC. I bought multiple Bison chucks through a similar site to Ajax: www.lathe-chucks.com (extremely old school web design, person owns several sites that sell different tooling, way better prices than MSC though you sometimes have to email for a quote).
Don't even get me started on their "value line" which is their Taiwanese or Chinese imports, only you get some intense MSC markup to go along with it vs when you buy the same item from a site like AllIndustrial.
One benefit McMaster gets is that they have so much stuff that they tend to be the first place you think of when you need some random item. A couple years back I had to build a prototype machine that would inspect wells and I needed 4" diameter clear PVC pipe. Went to McMaster, and of course it was there :-)
I'll second that. I ordered an 8-foot-long aluminum bar for $25, which, at the time, was too long to ship with traditional shippers. So, a semi trailer showed up at my door. Shipping cost $8.
Where are you finding pot metal bolts? Your best option should be anything from Ace/Home Depot/Lowes. The matte finish ones are zinc galvanized, that’s just the protective coating. They are made of carbon steel and are graded according to standards set by organizations like SAE.
Hardware stores will have grade 2 bolts for the most part (or the metric equivalents). These will be made with weaker steel and will be cut instead of cold rolled. If you’re doing something that needs more strength than that, you can get grade 5 or 8 bolts. These will be cold rolled from higher strength steel and may be tested with a penetrant dye to check for any fractures. You can get those at a hardware store or at many online stores. If you need more strength than that, you’re probably in an aerospace application and I recommend that you don’t ask for advice on HN.
If you’re buying a shit-load of bolts (like, more than a thousand of one kind of bolt), then you can go to a wholesale website.
Haven't got pot metal bolts, just thinking of some machine screw assortments I've bought on Amazon. They've worked fine for 3d printing projects, but makes me wary of fasteners from unknown sources if strength could matter.
Hardware store has been my go to, is that the reference people are using for saying McMaster bolts are 4x overpriced?
Yeah, it is. I wouldn’t worry about low grade bolts from unknown sources, really, unless it’s a safety critical application. The cost benefit to the manufacturer for cheaping out is almost nothing. To make it look like a bolt you’re going to have to make it correctly. You could use a cheaper metal but it doesn’t get much cheaper than low carbon steel which is already what they’re supposed to be made of.
Yeah, if you can buy what you want at big box hardware store, then do, prices won't get much lower than that, and you'll get something that's certified to a standard. McMaster is useful if your time is worth too much to waste it on trips to Home Depot, or if you want something less standard.
I don't usually find the local hardware stores to be cheaper than McMaster.
I see Home Depot has 1/4-20 18-8 stainless steel bolts for $7 a pack of 10. McMaster has them for $8 a pack of 50.
The exception is when I need just one or two of something and it is available in the single-unit bins at the local hardware store. With McMaster the minimum quantity is usually a box of N, but the price per unit usually quite a bit cheaper.
And of course the selection is vastly better. For the above example, I'd usually really buy 316 stainless, which Home Depot doesn't even have.
Self-assembled furniture seems to have terrible bolts more often than not. Instrument stands and drum kits also come with softest imaginable bolts except the most expensive gear. I'm sure there are other products like this.
I recently moved and needed some new furniture. I purchased a bed previously with storage boxes underneath in the past and I was dreading the same experience again.
I did buy a different model[0] this time around and it's been over 5 years since my last purchase, but the quality on this bed is much better. All of the holes were pre drilled/tapped correctly and they've vastly improved the way the mattress slats are secured.
For the drawers underneath, the joining method was much simpler than before and while I still wouldn't look forward to taking it apart if/when I move, I can at least see a viable path for disassembly and re-assembly at my future house. The previous drawers were junk and got stuck or broke within a month.
I'm currently assembling a TV stand[1] and so far it's been great except for the top shelf. It's a veneered wood product and I guess they want you to pick the "best" side and you have to tap the holes yourself. I would have preferred pre-drilled holes since a TV is going to cover 90% of the top anyway, but it's not a huge problem. It's also possible they use the same part number in some other product that doesn't require holes so this way is better for their logistics.
Are you stripping hex bolts? If so, the solution may be to buy some good hex bits (and a bit extender) which make it much easier to avoid slipping and stripping the bolt compared to a plain hex key.
Even worse, the hex sockets are often just a bit too large so that even proper tools won't fit. Ikea also has some special screws that are not really Phillips, Pozidrive or any other standard so there just isn't a driver that would fit.
While the bolts at home depot are made of some form of iron they often are not graded at all. There is a reason: they wouldn't pass any quality tests. The graded ones are probably okay, I'm not sure as I wouldn't attempt to use anything they have in something important as I have no way of knowing something didn't get put in the wrong bin by mistake.
Home Depot's private label brand (Everbilt) are absolutely graded. An SAE grade 1 or 2 is unmarked but if you look at their metric bolts you'll see the 8.8 grade mark.
I don't know where I got them, but I have used graded bolts in the past that broke under much less torque than they should. I am now more careful about getting bolts from a source I know I can trust.
Call a local machine shop, mechanic or welder and ask. Almost every town and city has a store that specializes in hardware for tradies that has better pricing and selection than HD or Ace or homeowner stores.
I have ordered a large amount of bolts from them, and they're quite good. They don't have McMaster's selection of weirdo stuff (ceramic bolts, titanium bolts, etc), but for your standard Grade 5 / Grade 8 etc, they're solid.
My go-to for stuff like this used to be SmallParts.com back when McMaster-Carr wouldn't sell to individuals (they do now). Amazon bought Small Parts and renamed it Amazon Supply. I haven't bought anything from them recently, but it's worth a shot.
Small Parts was amazing they specialized in, you got it, small components such as fasteners (you could get titanium screws if you needed them), small mechanicals such as tubing, solenoid valves, bearings, shafting, metal, etc. They were a prototyper's dream.
Home Depot bolts are total garbage quality compared to anything McMaster gives you. They are good for some stuff, but I would not use them for projects where you want the hardware to last. Also you don't have the choice of the type of steel etc.. which really matters for some projects. IDK if they even tell you what type of stainless their stainless are? 304?
No idea. I talked with the truck driver, and he said we was being paid way more than $8 for the delivery. I used my company account, so I guess they're willing to take a loss on some orders and make it up on others.
My experience around their shipping was the opposite— surprise outrageous fee to get fedex to deliver a few feet of PVC. This was back before they showed you shipping prices up front.
As soon as I saw the title of this post, I thought "best e-commerce site? they don't even show you the shipping price until the item has been sent, and the shipping prices are insane!"
I wrote them off long ago due to that - guess it's time to give them another try. Thanks for the heads up!
yea... this is the one fault of McMaster. I'm within normal 1 day shipping of one of their major distribution centers and its still pricey. Doesn't stop me from using them when I really need something.
Yeah, the floor on shipping seems to be about $10 (CA to WA) but at least you find out the rate in advance now. Often worth it even for inexpensive items if it saves you an hour going to the store and searching and maybe not finding it.
I don't know the GP's reason, but I also orderd long aluminum profiles for LED installations (it's needed for heat dissipation, and also helped with mounting in my case).
Probably not. They don’t ship to Canada. Don’t be fooled if you’re able to place an order with a non-US address. I was able to, before getting an email the next day when they realized their mistake.
Weird – I have been able to order parts for a client in the UK. I've used it mainly for connector harnesses.
I love their connector harnesses and I have standardized all my prototypes around them. It sounds expensive at first, but it's cheaper and less annoying than making them myself or hiring someone to do it for me.
We use them all the time here in Mississauga. Generally we're getting next-day delivery (I think they have a warehouse in Cleveland). It's not the cheapest option, but they are great for projects still in development as they almost always have exactly what you're looking for. The customer service is also fantastic.
And on top of that you don’t even need a business account. Individuals get the same service. I’ve ordered hard to find parts like tiny springs for home projects, just a few bucks. It’s amazing.
Yes. I'm missing an unusual screw from the armrest of my office Ekornes Stressless chair, and the closest Amazon length didn't work. I've seen the Mcmaster website before, but thanks for the reminder! I jumped on it, found the right screw in seconds.
Yeah, if you're in a large metro area (I was about 1 hour from the Atlanta distribution center), they would often ship SAME DAY if you ordered by about 10am. It was amazing, and very convenient during chaotic times when you forgot to order one tiny little piece of hardware that was needed before your custom built tooling could be delivered. This was in 2005 - 2007 timeframe, before Amazon started the 1 day stuff.
I didn't write about shipping speed since the Amazon standard is now 2 days or less. Yes their shipping speed is great, but it isn't a striking relative advantage, comparing against the rest of e-commerce
Besides the handy website, their many-thousand page phsyical catalog is great. We have a copy at work and it's easy to spend a long time flipping through, learning about all of the different things they have, and why they are useful.
My one complaint about their website (they don't give you an estimate of shipping costs in advance, so you just have to hope they're reasonable) has supposedly been fixed since the last time I ordered from them
Ok, but if we're being honest, you can make that sort of claim about anything and it's equally as unhelpful. Things can have value even if you can't perfectly define a metric, and even if others might use different metrics.
The author explained why they think it's great, so rather than waving your hands and denying that greatness could ever be defined, what about a constructive approach? Engage with the elements the author identified. Criticize specific ones, or suggest others. Say something you actually believe!
If you don't know what a great ecommerce website is, what is has, what it does, does reading a piece where someone says some site is a great e-commerce website influence your opinion? Does it shape your view?
If so, how does previous literature about the subject influenced the writer?
So, a great e-commerce website should be measured by it's form or by it's results?
Why non functional and not great websites thrive?
Would Jeff Bezos be fixated on those pixels because he believed that as long as amazon.com kept growing and selling, the site must therefore working great?
Those are all sincere questions, not rhetorical or trolling.
I don't think you're trolling, but again, you're not actually saying anything here. That's why you need to make the disclaimer that those are sincere questions. I'm suggesting that you instead take positions, even if weakly held ones. In other words, I think that you're doing something covert when you say "[N]o one knows what is a great e-commerce website. Is one that sells a lot? ... [T]hat is very easy to use?" or ask "So, a great e-commerce website should be measured by it's form or by it's results?"
What do you think? The article emphasized form and function. You seem to be proposing that results matter. Say that!
Just cobbling together bits of what you're "asking" it seems like you might instead have written the following: "It seems to me that the article focuses on form: simple design, great search and filtering, and useful information like CAD files. But being 'the best e-commerce site' needs to include succeeding at e-commerce. Being very easy to use might help. But there seem to be non functional and not 'great' websites (by the article's definition) that thrive."
I came across mcmaster.com like 10-15 years ago and I thought its design and experience was amazing. I didn't understand why other sites weren't like this.
Then I talked to regular people (like my friend who builds high-end magic tricks) who happened to use the site and like me wondered why more sites weren't usable like this.
And then after a few years, I saw that people in the comments here and elsewhere thought the same.
I haven't read the article, and I think the site is great. I've used it many times and it exemplifies what I think a great e-commerce site should be (from a customer perspective). They've built their website so you can find and order what you need with the bare minimum of effort. If I imagine trying to search for some of the things I order on McMaster, except on Amazon, let's just say I'm glad I don't have to.
Yes, because its catalog is also a CAD library, so you can put the parts into your design and be sure the parts will fit when they arrive tomorrow. Because every part is neatly categorized, searchable by its properties.
I am infuriated when shopping for clothes, computer parts, etc. because the items are rarely categorized and when they are, it isn't comprehensive so searches tend to miss out on the obvious so I end up browsing a site's entire catalog.
And, they do sell a lot. They're the industry standard. The only problem I've had is that they won't ship to individuals in Canada so I had to think up a fake company name.
The not delivering to Canada was my only complaint. I had to get a US friend to buy it and ship it after to me. I didn’t think of using a fake company to get it shipped.
lol, mcmaster carr is probably one of the only specialty e-commerce sites that anyone will randomly bring up in UX discussions or hobby conversations. everyone loves mcmaster carr, like actually everyone, so yeah, lots of people who haven't read this already independently decided that mcmaster carr is great.
even if you're not going to buy there (their prices are high, compared to alternative suppliers, is what I've heard, and there are items and brands they don't carry) it's still a super useful reference of what's possible and what general solutions in that area look like and cost, or even just basic lookup for what types of nuts and bolts you should look for in a project. like it's actually just a really nice pleasant interface for working with hardware in general.
> My point is: no one knows what is a great e-commerce website
I disagree. I know what is a great e-commerce website -- in the sense the article is talking about.
- loads fast
- makes items easy to find quickly
- has a simple, efficient shopping cart mechanism
- gets me in, order placed, and out in the shortest time possible
- is run by a company with great customer service
Yeah, there's probably an item or two I've forgotten from that list, and yeah, other people likely to order from a site might have a slightly different list.
But I have no doubt that I would recognize the same qualities on other websites that I and many (probably most) people would recognize as great -- or at the very minimum, as websites that don't suck.
That website routinely comes up in a lot of crafts and craft-related hobbies (in my case, it was guns, where gunsmithing can involve parts they sell), so it's not exactly a secret. And yes, people do actually like it regardless of the article.
OTOH I don't know of any serious hobbyists (of whatever) who get the majority of their supplies from Amazon. When you ask, people generally say that selection is poor and quality is always highly suspect.
I normally browse HN incognito on my phone but had to go to my desktop and login to say this: I fucking love MMC and their website. I got into woodworking during the pandemic and eventually built a loft bed for my son. I needed some very specific sizes of furniture bolts in small quantities and Amazon just didn't have what I needed. McMaster-Carr to the rescue!
I agree that they aren't the cheapest, but the quality is unimpeachable and the shipping is fast and reasonable even for small (i.e. retail) orders. I also love how everything in the catalog includes a brief but concise description of what it is used for.
Also, at the risk of perpetuating (largely accurate) stereotypes about gender psychology, it's clear that the website is designed around the typical male shopper: I am shopping to fulfill a very specific need and I want to acquire the solution as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I think the stereotypical female experience is wanting to see the breadth of items available, and maybe "oh wouldn't this go nicely with that thing you bought?" I really don't think the stereotype is true, though. I LOVE browsing McMaster with no specific items in mind, and would not at be mad about "you just bought 1/4-20 18-8 stainless steel screws. here are nuts."
All in all, I'd say to be careful with stereotypes. I'm sure women love the McMaster-Carr shopping experience.
McMaster in general for all things high quality if I need to make something. Calipers, verniers. Tap sets. Electrically conductive TPU filament. Amazon is for crap.
most of these online catalog parts houses have excellently functional websites.
but like, even back in the day distribution warehouses had excellent terminal based inventory search and ordering interfaces over packet switched networks.
also, the reason why they're all good is because they're not trying to sell you anything. they're for people who are at work, know what they need, know they have options on where to buy. therefore it's streamlined as much as possible to make life at work easy (which becomes their differentiator, along with easy billing terms and fast shipping), rather than market things to people who aren't even making decisions on what to buy...
RS, on the other hand, are so-so. The new JavaScript stuff looks shinier but still they don't surface out-of-stock status in the search which is infuriating when do many things are on long lead times.
I wish digikey was as good as McMaster. With digikey I often have to parse through a huge table with many pages to figure out what the difference is between a bunch of search results. On McMaster you can clearly see search results categorized in sub tables and densely arranged to make clear what the options are.
Are there any electronics websites that actually organized like McMaster?
I was thinking the same. Digikey, Mouser, etc. are great, but their websites don’t give me the same confidence that McMaster does. There’s always a fear in the back of my mind when browsing these electronics sites, wondering if the part I’m looking for slipped through the cracks of my filters.
When filtering McMaster on the other hand, I have absolute confidence that I will find the part I’m looking for, assuming it is stocked. It’s really intuitive and robust. I’m sure much of this can be chalked up to the fact that McMaster has a much smaller and more specific catalog, but still.
EVERY online retailer should take notes on how McMaster is able to create psychological safety when browsing. It’s a real peace of mind, as strange as that may sound.
digikey, mouser, and arrow are the big ones that I'm aware of. All of their UX is really bad compared to McMaster though.
I love when a field value table has redundant values for 20mm, 2cm, 2.0cm, 20mm with a trailing space, etc. A lot of the value-add here from McMaster comes from pure data cleanup and categorization and cleaning up the categories and fields. That gets way harder to do on something the size of mouser or digikey though, they have a LOT of product types in the catalog, and tens of millions of products in their warehouses. Just cataloging it all is a massive amount of work.
I'd actually be curious what the data structure of the McMaster catalog is to support that. It's a cool website, it makes it seem so effortless to search for parts.
Digi-key definitely could sanitize/normalize their field values better. But I feel they are intentionally being conservative about touching datasheet values given by the vendors.
In practice (based on experience of selecting electronic components), I don't find this a big issue; after filtering on some other obvious, more binary fields, what left is often a small enough pool of values (like 16V, 16.0V, 12-20V, etc.) to be manually selected/checked.
https://tme.eu does a better job of this. If you enter "16V", it knows to also select the 12-20V ranges. It also works the other way around, you can enter "10-22u" in the parameteric search and it will find both 10uF and 22uF parts.
So annoying that digikey doesn't do this, you have to click each value/range separately.
Electronics are a different market than the one that McMaster serves. Frequently at Digikey, you need an exact part number from a specific manufacturer. Or, if you're buying parts at scale, you might be quite price-sensitive.
At McMaster, there would be one 555 timer, one utility op-amp that implements the LM741 spec, one low-noise op-amp, one 5V regulator, etc. They would all perform at or somewhat above average, but you wouldn't know precisely what you were getting.
There probably is room for a McMaster-like Digikey (or a simplified Digikey storefront for those who aren't picky about details), but it is unclear how large its market opportunity might be. It might look kinda like SparkFun.
A lot of the time, details in electronics really do matter. I think I've ordered almost every variation of the LM35 temperature sensor over my career. Sometimes you care more about price, sometimes you care more about accuracy. McMaster would probably only stock one of the grades, not sure which.
I was also intimidated by the huge table and hundreds of columns the first time I use Digi-Key, but only later realized how handy it is to have all the parameters listed together. It makes comparison subtle difference of each parts so much easier.
The filter above will also tell you existing enum values within the current showing list, so you will instantly get an idea you are comparing.
Again, both have their advantages, but I recommend give it a try. Finding parts isn't any harder this way.
I use filters all of the time, but they frequently don't work (as mentioned but a sibling comment) sometimes the filter value don't allow a range so if you want anything between 10 and 100 you have to select all of the values between 10 and 100. Other times, the options aren't sorted so you have to select 10,000 uf and 10 mf and 0.01 F. Still other times numeric values are sorted alphabetically so you get 1 ohm, 1.1 kohm, 1.2 megaohm, 2 ohm, etc. So to select a range you need to clock through around the entire range of values looking for the order of magnitude you want.
Wow, Jameco -- I haven't thought about them for a long time. When I was a kid I used to get those paper catalogs full of electronics parts and browse through them, wishing I had both
1) the money to order whatever I wanted from them
and 2) the knowledge to make cool things with all of those parts.
One of these days I'm going to find some time and do a few electronics projects. I've always been interested, and I did a fair amount of simple experimentation as a kid, but as an adult life has kept me busy with other pursuits.
"Functional websites" is not what we are discussing here, but amazing websites.
I've seen a carparts store online and it had something really similar, a few words like "oil filter 2017 ford mustang" and you were literally looking at the part in the dropdown list, exactly what you want.
What do most sites do wrong?
1) Not loading the search data into RAM on the server so it is really fast - most companies could do this with their level of stock and only need a couple of GB per web server
2) Requiring a postback to start filtering
3) Not allowing the ordering of search terms to be changed e.g. "Ford Mustang Oil Filter" should match the same as "Oil Filter Ford Mustang"
4) Not having images for all results
5) Not being able to zoom in on images to check something is what you think it is
6) Using a stock image which doesn't necessarily match the item
For companies whose primary interface with the public is searching for stuff, most e-commerce sites I use are shamefully bad at both performance and usability.
Rock Auto is great, definitely more consumer oriented and delivery is much slower, seems like professional mechanics rely on same day delivery. The biggest difference I see is that McMaster is curated, you want something there is usually one or maybe a couple options and it doesn't usually openly display the manufacturer. Rock Auto shows you all the options.
I agree so much. It's what every single mail order company should have done. Freaking parametric search eaverywhere and uniform engraving style pictures so that your eye quickly catches the difference between the screw types.
McMaster is like the backend of an auto parts store. You tell the clerk what you need and they might ask if you want the cheap or premium version, then you pay and leave. You don't want to walk the aisles looking at stuff because you've got a dead alternator that needs to be replaced by Monday morning. Shopping at Amazon is like going to a massive department store. They've got everything but they lay out the store in a way that almost forces you to browse. You aren't in a rush because you are just looking at kitchen gadgets and might also be interested in buying a new pillow.
In a better world, we’d have more companies like McMaster selling people what they need and providing a highly valued service, instead of using ads and weaponized psychology to convince them to buy some more junk they don’t need that’s going to end up in a landfill by December.
Mechanical Engineer and product designer here. I've been using mcmaster daily for 20 years to do my job. It is definitely the standard by which all others are judged. I'll gladly pay 2, 3, 5, even 10x the price to get it from McMaster. The service, the CAD models, I have what I need the next day. As an example of the level of their service, you can send them a box of loose parts, no part numbers, no markings, and they'll go through it, figure out what's what, and refund you for it. They make it so easy, you just have to do the engineering. Thank you McMaster-Carr.
Lucky. When I was in Engineering school, the Mechanical Engineering department had one catalog. We couldn't get any more - something about limited numbers printed (though, I'll confess I never tried to get my own). It was passed around among the students in Machine Design as if it were some sacred scroll.
Totally, it used to be a right of passage. You'd get your first job and (usually share) a copy of the machinerys handbook, and a yellow mcmaster book. I used to keep at least one at home long into the days where you don't need it anymore "just in case the internet goes down". It was those 2 books, the pemn 3 ring binder, and the ryerson catalog to know what mill sizes there were in what metals.
mcmcaster carr is also extremely popular in the hobby drone building market for buying bolts/nuts/fasteners/standoffs to attach circuit boards (ESCs, flight controllers, etc) to carbon fiber plate, and for attaching cnc cut carbon fiber plate piece together to build the whole frame of a small UAV.
people in the film/tv/production industry also use them to buy various fasteners and hardware for rigging lights, microphones, building complex camera systems onto gimbal platforms, etc.
This would be an immediate positive in my book. Most the bug reports I upstream to vendors go nowhere. Getting in contact with someone who can actually fix the problem, instead of just papering over it? Completely negates any downside from the original problem, in my book.
Really, I hear nothing back from a large majority of my bug reports. It must be around 3/4 are ignore or get a template response with no solution. Solving the problem is amazing. We all make mistakes, we don’t all fix them.
It depends on what you need. For basic metric nuts and bolts it seems to be the same price as a local hardware store but I don’t have to leave my office to buy the stuff.
Honestly, not really. They want the project done sooner, and McMaster is a means to that end. The supply chain team can find a better longer term vendor later.
Not at all. My rate is very high, so saving a day of my time saves them way more. The burn rate on some of these projects is hundreds of thousands, millions a day. Saving time when your on the critical path (as mechanical design typically is) is worth that much. Once the design is finished there is a whole army of manufacturing engineers and sourcing folks that can drive the cost down. That's not the niche that mcmaster fills.
If it's a commonly used item, it would be much more efficient to pay an entry level CAD guy to draw up a parametric screw part. Add in toolsolids of all the subtracts that the component will do (taps, CBore, clearance), and supplier call outs. It starts to become efficient.
In my experience, the overhead of what you suggest is significant. Leading and instructing an employee or subcontractor, dealing with learning curves, etc. It sounds nice, but the logic in the GP comment is sound (i.e. that spending 2x or 3x the price for what you get can be worth it in most cases).
Tried that, management still insisted I get all of it from Fastenal, great pricing and they have an online catalogue, but ffs it takes a week to get stuff in.
For like a $.5 part from McMaster? Are you on drugs?
McMaster is "expensive" but it isn't like they are charging a crazy amount of money. They are just expensive.
I still use them over randos tho bc I know I'm going to get what I ordered. I never did not, but if I did, I'd have the correct part maybe even same day.
The cost of the part doesn't matter. The cost of my time does.
For common components, I need a parametric part so that I can instantly change the length, size or type. If my M12 becomes an M16, I want all the taps and C'Bores to adjust without any further input from myself.
For more expensive parts, it's nice to have a homegrown parametric part to minimize potential missorders.
Drawing up a component is quick, sure. Measuring and specifying is not as quick and easy, and you won't necessarily have appropriate metrology equipment or trained personnel on site.
A fair price for an electrical resistor is roughly $0.02 - $0.08, depending on what you are ordering. Buying it from McMaster will probably cost you $0.12 - $0.50.
Not every component is this trivially inexpensive, but we are working in a price range where it's very much worth paying the high McMaster prices. Let them hire the entry level CAD guy and spread the cost across many more prototypes than your company will make.
When you refine the product for mass production, then it is worth shaving pennies.
Nahh, postage is $12.99; I can save that by driving 5 hours each way tomorrow to collect it - unlike you wasteful people who stupidly pay the postage and have it arrive the next morning /s
For production quantities, sure, nobody in their right mind would source from McMaster Carr (or Grainger, or any similar company,) but for their niche, they have a solid value proposition: they’ll get you small quantities of anything they carry incredibly quickly. For maintenance and repair (their primary market) or prototyping, that can be incredibly valuable.
I'm sure they have internal horror stories of the practice, but they do it.
When we sold an old company to a PE group, all the McMaster loose stuff in the warehouse went back to them stacked in boxes on a pallet for them to work through. I wouldn't be surprised to learn our CM did the same thing after the sale.
Alas, for some reason they only cater to the US market and have no presence in the EU, for example. So while it is possible to order from them, it's rather inconvenient as you need to deal with customs/taxes.
Digi-Key got this right: you can order DDP, which makes things quick & simple.
Incidentally, I am amazed that they don't have a meaningful competitor in the EU. It seems most companies here are stuck in the 80s and dedicate next to zero effort to their web ordering process.
Pro tip: Use M.D. after your name and you're a business. I AM an M.D. but friends I've given this advice to over the years have had success in impersonating a business with this title.
Yeah what is going on with B2B in Europe and not showing prices? It's absolutely bonkers, I have been renovating my house the past 6 years, and to even get into the stores I had to get a business account (by cheating and using my IT business registration).
None of the websites show prices if you don't have an account, and some of them even check if your business is legit so I just get refused. The one that rejected me also seems to only allow loading goods by fully sized truck so maybe it wasn't going to happen anyway, but it's so strange.
I wonder if it's down to having an opportunity to negotiate the price. It's either that, or things like handling get calculated to fine points - a single screw being more expensive than a box of screws, for example. Shipping is complicated as well. Maybe it's about setting up invoicing accounts as well?
Anyway, lots of barriers, makes you think it's either a requirement that I as a layperson don't understand, or a hole in the market.
That said, what about German electronics parts sites like Conrad or Reichelt?
I'll do you one better: I had to create a verified business account just to download software(ladder logic IDE for a sewage pump) from one such site.
I even got a call from a nice, older gentleman who asked me why do I want a business account and could this be avoided somehow. Funny he should ask.
To me it appears that these companies see presence in the web as a necessary evil and would rather do business the old fashioned way: calling and in-person meetings.
Apparently so far they hadn't had any incentive to change.
They haven't seen any incentive to change, but will grumble about Amazon and point to that as the biggest threat to their business. If they aren't, they should be.
I'd rather do business with anyone BUT Amazon, and its telling I still find myself having to order some bits from them every month.
Even though the EU is one market, it really isn't much of a single market due to language and cultural differences. I've helped B2B companies and most small/medium sized ones want to limit their services to their own (and their country's neighbor's) country. There are a ton of problems related to fake company addresses placing orders and having them delivered at some random company's parking lot. Problems with regards to refunds, and –mot important– it is VERY hard to get the police to do anything about it. The minute it is outside of their jurisdiction, the police just doesn't do anything really.
I mean renovating your house is not B2B so it makes sense they want business registration.
I think they do it because they don't want to bother with small buyers. If people knew how much cheaper the parts are in these companies compared to hobby markets they would all want to buy few pieces to save money. This is not customer they want, they want customers that buy massive quantities.
The one that rejected me was a supplier that generally targets larger full construction sites so I totally get it for them. For the rest though, their main audience is definitely normal renovation contractors, and my order sizes are exactly the same as those.
I often use Conrad for its huge collection of small parts (mechanical as well as semiconductors) most of which can be ordered individually, with an interface with lots of filters and easy access to manuals and data sheets. Sometimes their categorization is a bit off, and they don't have CAD files, but it's decent enough.
Musumi is great too, they're cool because they have a lot of semi custom parts like plates with holes in them where you can spec the hole locations, rotary shafts with custom lengths and end finishing, etc.
DDP is probably the only good solution here for most EU customers, but frankly the hassle and expense of doing business in the EU is what keeps most US e-commerce companies from entering the market.
It stands for 'Delivery Duty Paid', i.e. customs charges, import tariffs, taxes, handling charges are included in the price and don't arrive as an unwelcome surprise.
It is a shipping term, it stands for deluvered duty paid. Basically, customs duties are paid by the shipper and the item is delivered directly to the customer. From a logistics perspective it is a massive PITA, but for DTC sales in the EU it's the preferred option.
I see a couple other folks jumped in. It’s basically a way to estimate duties and taxes up front so the EU customer knows the full price before they order.
The reality it that most EU customers already know the price before they order (or have a good idea it’s going to be 20% more). But they like to pretend they don’t.
Maybe because the site is hard-coded for the US imperial system?
Quoting the article: «Bolts are commonly specified by their thread size (e.g. 1/4"-20), and their length. I'm looking for a 1/4"-20 x 1" bolt, meaning that the bolt's diameter is 1/4" and its length is 1", so I select these filters.»
> It's not like Americans don't occasionally need metric bolts.
It’s becoming a lot more common than not in fact. Automobile industry for example is pretty heavy on using metric bolts / screws. It’s not a recent thing either, a 2004 F-250 I used to have had many (most?) bolts as metric.
The US automotive industry started their metric push in the 1970s, and was mostly done in the 1980s for everything new. There are still a few parts from the 1960s and before that work just fine and so haven't been redesigned (and thus the bracket it goes on in a mix), but if there was ever need to redesign that part it would be all metric.
This only helps the tool makers. I wrench on Japanese and European cars yet every toolset comes with Metric and SAE sets. It seems to only inflate the parts count without giving you more functionality. The SAE and Metric bits are practically interchangeable.
> yet every toolset comes with Metric and SAE sets
I’ve mostly only seen that really with jumbo cheap quality “Father’s Day gift” type tool sets. If you are buying good quality tools, SAE and Metric are most often sold separately in my experience.
> It seems most companies here are stuck in the 80s and dedicate next to zero effort to their web ordering process.
I'm so glad we can order from mcmaster here in canada, even though shipping is two days and usually min 30 USD even for tiny orders. All local industrial suppliers are truly stuck in the 80s. They have a paper catalog, without prices (if you're lucky you can get a PDF too). If you want prices, you have to call a salesperson, or send an email with an item list and wait a day or two to get a quote back. Then you get your quote, and some items are in stock, some others in stock "nearby" (next day delivery), others are backorder (1-X weeks). Then you have a lengthy phone or email back and forth to try and figure out what's in stock as a replacement.
So yeah, McMaster whenever possible and I'll gladly (have my employer) pay more for it. Shout-out to Misumi, too, however. I do mostly prototyping and I use so much of their customizable items, like rotary shafts. Much cheaper and faster than doing a drawing, sending it out to 3-8 local shops to try to find one that is quiet enough jobwise to take on a tiny one-off project and waiting 4 weeks for it, at a high price.
10/10 agree for Canadians McMaster Carr is a godsend. Can order random stock material and have it tomorrow and have a certificate telling me exactly what stuff is with a nice cad model. Their search is the best though, can write some half assed description of what I want and it'll just deisplay what I want. Their mobile website is garbage though.
We hade a competitor in Europe. It was called Zoro. Maybe not THAT clean but overall they also had a good website and great prices. But they folded some years ago.
Oh how I wish Mcmaster would open an EU branch... I don't even mind if they charge us more, but PLEASE for the love of all engineers in Europe, just open a branch here.
A friend of mine worked there right after college. I happened to buy some girl scout cookies through her, and joked with her that you can get everything from McMaster. When she brought me the cookies, she brought me a fake McMaster invoice for them too.
I've heard some mixed reviews about what it's like to work there, but I completely agree: as a customer, despite the (sometimes very high) prices, I was always incredibly happy with McMaster.
I often hear about McMaster from US sources and how great it is (though you pay for convenience), but are there equivalents in Europe? France in my case.
Another vote for McMaster-Carr. It is not like they are great, they just are not stupid or frustrating or annoying at all. I don't know of any other websites that meet that relatively simple standard.
Perhaps part of why their website is so good is because they deliver the goods. They follow through. Ever need a 4x8 sheet of copper? It gets delivered to your front door. Sooner than you expect, and at a very fair price.
Yeah. It's kind of like how in chess, many learners study openings and gambits and obscure checkmates, when the low hanging fruit is just learning to spot and avoid blunders.
MMC is mostly about not making the mistakes everybody else makes, which puts it near the top even before you consider what they do well.
I think everyone knows what the "mistakes" are, it's just that its en vogue to "hate your customers" the way amazon and similar companies do, racing to the bottom to squeeze money out of them with dark patterns instead of just charging more for good service
Amazon doesn't hate their customers nor do they love their customers.
They clearly are indifferent to customers except to the point required by law, or as needed to keep the cash flowing in.
It costs money to do the things that MMC does and Amazon prefers volume and revenue over the margins that MMC can command by providing quality service.
McMaster's pricing and structure also self-selects for the right kind of customer -- customers who are willing to pay a reasonable premium for quality, speed, and customer service.
+1 for "self-selects" for the right kind of customer. Self-selecting is interesting. Mine was a need, not a hobby, it was not a luxury. And like the original post pointed out, there was no need to convince me to buy. So I wonder if there needs to be another Amazon, one that it focused on those customers who "need" something?
Also, my own experience was that I did not pay a "premium". I really did need 1/2 sheets of copper on a regular basis. I could get small pieces at a premium. I could get larger sheets by driving for a hour or ... I could pay about the same total cost or less and get them delivered to my door... This was not limited to a few items. I needed plastic bags, about quart size. Again I got just functional bags - not shoddy at all - at a very reasonable price. The same things at amazon would have been a) not functional or b) impossible to find among all the shoddiness.
I like buying auto parts from RockAuto. Their website is dead simple to use. They have nice features like good/better/best, showing the most popular item of that category for that car, an icon for OEM parts, and another icon that shows items in the same warehouse as the item in your cart. So when you can't decide between a dozen brands of sparkplugs, you can pick one that is both OEM and is in the same warehouse as the air filter you needed so you only have to pay for one shipping cost.
I used to. Then I bought a part that didn't fit (a switch that obviously didn't have the right number of terminals), and the return process turned me off.
I still check them though as they often have good enough parts for a lot less than OEM prices. Though I also still go to the OEM when I get tired of third party parts that don't work (after the switch issue above I went to my local auto parts store - the switch fits but doesn't work, I'll see what the OEM part does. Rock auto was $8, local store $20, deal $140 - but I trust the dealer switch will work for another 20 years)
> It is not like they are great, they just are not stupid or frustrating or annoying at all.
Sad to say, comparing them to most other sites where you try (or attempt to try -- yes, often it is that bad) makes a case for saying, yes indeed, they are great!
I find that to be the case for many "industrial" (for the lack of better word) online stores. E.g. for plastic containers, https://www.usplastic.com/ is similar.
I love having a Grainger within walking distance of my workplace because it means I can order some bearings (or whatever) and go pick them up on my lunch break. Grainger's prices are nothing amazing but sometimes the total purchase price ends up being less than all other options when you don't have to pay for shipping.
MechE here as well. An alternative to McMaster is Misumi. Misumi is nice because you can order parts that are made to order (imagine a rod with the specific thread and length). No next day shipping like McMaster but being able to buy a custom “off the shelf” part without making a special internal part number is huge (so you don’t need drawings or anything). They’ll ship you a couple books like the signature yellow book from McMaster. They’ll even host a seminar explaining why “good engineers design, great engineers integrate” (really only true for the industry and not consumer tech).
Misumi is awesome. It's basically Japan's answer to McMaster-carr.
10 years ago I would have said Misumi's website was better than MMC. Unfortunately Misumi has gotten a bit less usable over the past decade, while McMaster has improved. Misumi's paper catalogue is incredible though and I surprise myself to say I would rather browse it than either their or McMaster's website.
Top quality configurable / customizable parts is certainly the way of the future, and it's amazing that Misumi has the whole process figured out. You can get a custom precision leadscrew of the length you want with the ends turned down to the diameter you want and the retaining ring grooves you want, and buy just one piece for a reasonable price. Any ordinary machine shop would reject the order unless you bought fifty or more.
I think the most annoying thing about both sites is its weird ass names. Like it’s obvious that McMaster call certain things a certain way so that it’s less searchable elsewhere. Misumi takes this to a whole new level.
> being able to buy a custom “off the shelf” part without making a special internal part number
How does that work? I have been searching the internet for stainless steel M8 x 20 set screws with a torx socket, maybe uncommon but straightforward. I have yet to find these anywhere outside of having them manufactured in china by truckload - I need maybe 100.
"Set screw" means the same as "grub screw", i.e. a bolt where the entire thing is threaded, and the head is set within the bounds of the thread, not proud of it.
Torx grub screws are super uncommon, I don't think I've ever seen one. Usually they have a hex socket (for an allen key), or occasionally they're slotted (for a flat-blade screwdriver).
I think they are uncommon because torx drivers are always bigger than the head of the tool. They always taper down to the size as part of the design, so that doesn't work well for most applications.
I can get a straight torx screwdriver with shaft diameter smaller than the screw at my local hardware store. No need for worldwide shipping, I can get that on bike. There exist also torx bits with long shaft.
These are just standard parts though. Misumi's real configuration flexibility comes from parts that are parametrically defined. For example you can basically design a shaft by specing the material, coating, diameter, length, tolerances, and additional parametric features (external threading, tapped holes, flats, grooves, etc).
AND you can order that same part number again the next time! Configuration options are all built into the part number directly, so you can reference THAT exact number in your own internal documents if you choose to source from Misumi.
Mil spec part numbers for things like screws are great! We needed a very long screw in a specific style and material that no one stocked. We pulled up the mil spec datasheet for that style of screw, made up the part number based on our needs, and sent it to our fastener vendor. We get back exactly what we designed for without having to spend time designing our own special purpose screw. The vendor already has the spec so we can just point to exactly what we want and none of us have to spend time going back and forth to find a compromise.
I've used Misumi on projects before. I've ordered all kinds of custom stuff including drive shafts and tons of different brackets. Everything comes neatly labeled and bagged. The best part IMO is the custom aluminum extrustion (8020 clone). You can order everything cut to length, with holes drilled, holes tapped, etc. The lead time sucks though. I'm green with envy over all my friends back home that get to use McmasterCarr.
And Misumi works well in Europe, which helps a lot. They also have quite often great prices.
Now the catalog is not as far reaching as Mcmaster. We don't have a Mcmaster in Europe :(
500 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] threadIn fact, I was just browsing Home Depot for some tool hooks, but I think I'll buy them from this place instead.
Don't worry, just click the email link at the top of the page and they WILL get back to you - even over a 20 cent part.
Okay but responding to customer enquiries isn't uncommon.
When you work in the tech industry, you get accustomed to everything being done by text, but the rest of the world isn't so convinced :)
This article is also completely glossing over another reason to use them: Their shipping is somehow insanely fast.
Almost everything is next-day delivery, even for standard shipping. They've somehow got their logistics COMPLETELY nailed. I believe they have their own agreements with USPS/FedEx/etc...
McMaster is generally not the cheapest, but they're almost always the fastest and the easiest.
Machining/industry runs on McMaster.
[0]Sometimes you need to spring for air shipping if you are in the sticks.
Could it be that you live next to one of their warehouses?
On the other hand, Amazon delays orders on purposes if you aren't a Prime member.
I.E., With USPS you can pretty much assume that you are going to get a letter next-day if it comes from your state
Sounds like a conflict of interest if they literally start transit then delay at some point. Like maybe retailers shouldn't be able to own shipping
I've seen both Fedex and UPS do it, but in some places it seemed like one or the other.
I don't see it all that much anymore though. Definitely post-covid but tbh it's really been years since I've seen it. I can't tell how much of that is vs me moving away from a rural home (might be more likely to attempt "batching" deliveries in rural areas due to distance) vs an actual change in behavior here.
It may also be the shift to JIT logistics too - you have to have a big warehouse or something to hold them. Even if it's sitting in a trailer somewhere, you still have to have a big lot to hold them. These are costs that are probably not justified for the return of "lol make customers more amicable to pay more for better shipping", the conversion there is ~0% for the most part. The 5-day window is nice for the courier if they need it of course, holiday is madness in the mail business (and payments, retail, etc) from what I know, but if your throughput is significantly lower than your mail volume then you've got problems, so you need to be able to ship it through in 2-3 days on average anyway, and if you can do that... why pay for someplace to hold onto it when we can JIT it right onto a truck?
Today it seems like if your shipping drops off for a couple days it's usually lost. I had one package stop tracking and then bounce 100 miles in the wrong direction, another where it stopped tracking and then showed up with box damage, etc, but haven't seen it just hang out like the old days.
Amazon, too, will play games with shipping windows... on a thunderbolt hub, they set a delivery date like two weeks out, sold and shipped by amazon. Like a week later I see a ship notice, cool it'll be here soon right? Lol nope, shipped UPS Surepost, so they got their week out of it.
I’ve had countless packages “stuck” in Troutdale for days before suddenly continuing on to Seattle.
I wonder if they are applying ML to the distribution batching and coming up with probabilities to each route's batching efficiency. With enough detailed delivery transaction data, they could identify the probability of it being worth holding the package in the warehouse or trailer to batch it, versus sending it on its way.
Unless it’s USPS. Then nothing makes sense.
If you split the fulfillment off from the retailing, the fulfillment will still have a queue.
Should the government mandate first in first out or something, no ability to pay for priority?
you delay for up to a week, this lets you build efficient shipping batches.
But B2B is weird. If I need my employer to ship me something that I’ll use next month, I am hard pressed to get them to ship slower than 2nd day air.
I did think it was pretty funny that the same tweezers CVS sells for $7 a piece in midtown Manhattan costs 5/$1 on Aliexpress. Only difference is the CVS tweezers are available immediately whereas I had to wait 20 days to receive the ones from Aliexpress - though I more or less have a lifetime supply now. :)
Maybe you didn't see the Footnote:
Footnotes
[1] "Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company. Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn't let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page. They were like millions of his own precious children. So they're all still there, and Larry is not." https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
I buy screws there all the time. It isn't like it is $10 a screw! It's like a nickel or less.
I'm not so sure about this. I'm not a prime member and I frequently get orders delivered before the estimated delivery date. On the other hand I also see instances where amazon takes suspiciously long to ship something. A charitable explanation might be that their logistics capacity (eg. planes or vans) is limited, so if you're not a prime member you get deprioritized.
I avoid using Amazon, so as you can imagine, I don’t have a prime membership. It doesn’t seem to matter.
In addition, you can generally get a useful human on the bloody phone at these companies!
The delivery priority is because their customers are losing real money until that shipment of parts to repair their production line comes in. If those parts don't come in when they're supposed to, the people who cut checks are gonna start yelling.
However, I tend to prefer MSC (https://www.mscdirect.com/) over McMaster if I can--especially for machine tooling.
It really feels like McMaster really relies on the fact that they can be a "one stop shop" so my experience has been that things tend to be slightly more expensive and with "servicable" quality and with "very good" delivery. However, with a bit of Internet-Fu, you can generally find a better version of the McMaster product at the same price point.
I also can't find anything on their website, what a terrible search and catalog functionality they have. Like the opposite of Mcmaster.
However, a quick look shows them to be dead on price for Mitutoyo dial calipers. Boring heads look a bit more expensive than I remember. Milling bits seem normal price-wise as well.
Who is your go to? Machine tooling is always expensive and I'm always looking for places that are cheaper.
Kurt DX6: $650 on AllIndustrial, $737 on MSC.
Bison 7-866-0800 (a 3-jaw 8" forged steel chuck that I happen to own): $1090 through USA Bison retailers like Ajax, $1376 through MSC. I bought multiple Bison chucks through a similar site to Ajax: www.lathe-chucks.com (extremely old school web design, person owns several sites that sell different tooling, way better prices than MSC though you sometimes have to email for a quote).
Don't even get me started on their "value line" which is their Taiwanese or Chinese imports, only you get some intense MSC markup to go along with it vs when you buy the same item from a site like AllIndustrial.
Hardware stores will have grade 2 bolts for the most part (or the metric equivalents). These will be made with weaker steel and will be cut instead of cold rolled. If you’re doing something that needs more strength than that, you can get grade 5 or 8 bolts. These will be cold rolled from higher strength steel and may be tested with a penetrant dye to check for any fractures. You can get those at a hardware store or at many online stores. If you need more strength than that, you’re probably in an aerospace application and I recommend that you don’t ask for advice on HN.
If you’re buying a shit-load of bolts (like, more than a thousand of one kind of bolt), then you can go to a wholesale website.
Hardware store has been my go to, is that the reference people are using for saying McMaster bolts are 4x overpriced?
I see Home Depot has 1/4-20 18-8 stainless steel bolts for $7 a pack of 10. McMaster has them for $8 a pack of 50.
The exception is when I need just one or two of something and it is available in the single-unit bins at the local hardware store. With McMaster the minimum quantity is usually a box of N, but the price per unit usually quite a bit cheaper.
And of course the selection is vastly better. For the above example, I'd usually really buy 316 stainless, which Home Depot doesn't even have.
Self-assembled furniture seems to have terrible bolts more often than not. Instrument stands and drum kits also come with softest imaginable bolts except the most expensive gear. I'm sure there are other products like this.
I did buy a different model[0] this time around and it's been over 5 years since my last purchase, but the quality on this bed is much better. All of the holes were pre drilled/tapped correctly and they've vastly improved the way the mattress slats are secured.
For the drawers underneath, the joining method was much simpler than before and while I still wouldn't look forward to taking it apart if/when I move, I can at least see a viable path for disassembly and re-assembly at my future house. The previous drawers were junk and got stuck or broke within a month.
I'm currently assembling a TV stand[1] and so far it's been great except for the top shelf. It's a veneered wood product and I guess they want you to pick the "best" side and you have to tap the holes yourself. I would have preferred pre-drilled holes since a TV is going to cover 90% of the top anyway, but it's not a huge problem. It's also possible they use the same part number in some other product that doesn't require holes so this way is better for their logistics.
0: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/gladstad-upholstered-bed-2-stor...
1: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/fjaellbo-tv-unit-black-90339290...
I just ordered 8, 1.5" x 3/8" square head set screws from Fastenal. . . . for $18.
That's a bit much.
Small Parts was amazing they specialized in, you got it, small components such as fasteners (you could get titanium screws if you needed them), small mechanicals such as tubing, solenoid valves, bearings, shafting, metal, etc. They were a prototyper's dream.
Also they do not have a massive selection...
I wrote them off long ago due to that - guess it's time to give them another try. Thanks for the heads up!
I love their connector harnesses and I have standardized all my prototypes around them. It sounds expensive at first, but it's cheaper and less annoying than making them myself or hiring someone to do it for me.
Which is a shame, I'd love to be able to use them.
Besides the handy website, their many-thousand page phsyical catalog is great. We have a copy at work and it's easy to spend a long time flipping through, learning about all of the different things they have, and why they are useful.
Here is Adam Savage talking about why their catalog is awesome: https://youtu.be/8kbu34dk92s
- If you haven't read the article, would you think this site great?
My point is: no one knows what is a great e-commerce website. Is one that sells a lot? Amazon does it.
Is not one that sells a lot, but that is very easy to use?
The author explained why they think it's great, so rather than waving your hands and denying that greatness could ever be defined, what about a constructive approach? Engage with the elements the author identified. Criticize specific ones, or suggest others. Say something you actually believe!
Maybe I didn't express myself very well.
If you don't know what a great ecommerce website is, what is has, what it does, does reading a piece where someone says some site is a great e-commerce website influence your opinion? Does it shape your view?
If so, how does previous literature about the subject influenced the writer?
So, a great e-commerce website should be measured by it's form or by it's results?
Why non functional and not great websites thrive?
Would Jeff Bezos be fixated on those pixels because he believed that as long as amazon.com kept growing and selling, the site must therefore working great?
Those are all sincere questions, not rhetorical or trolling.
What do you think? The article emphasized form and function. You seem to be proposing that results matter. Say that!
Just cobbling together bits of what you're "asking" it seems like you might instead have written the following: "It seems to me that the article focuses on form: simple design, great search and filtering, and useful information like CAD files. But being 'the best e-commerce site' needs to include succeeding at e-commerce. Being very easy to use might help. But there seem to be non functional and not 'great' websites (by the article's definition) that thrive."
Then I talked to regular people (like my friend who builds high-end magic tricks) who happened to use the site and like me wondered why more sites weren't usable like this.
And then after a few years, I saw that people in the comments here and elsewhere thought the same.
And this post is the latest.
I think there's something there.
No, I would have ordered what I wanted, quickly and easily, and probably not thought about the website at all. Which is what makes it great.
I am infuriated when shopping for clothes, computer parts, etc. because the items are rarely categorized and when they are, it isn't comprehensive so searches tend to miss out on the obvious so I end up browsing a site's entire catalog.
And, they do sell a lot. They're the industry standard. The only problem I've had is that they won't ship to individuals in Canada so I had to think up a fake company name.
If you search HN comments for "McMaster-Carr", you'll see their website is frequently brought up as an example of great UX, going back over 10 years.
even if you're not going to buy there (their prices are high, compared to alternative suppliers, is what I've heard, and there are items and brands they don't carry) it's still a super useful reference of what's possible and what general solutions in that area look like and cost, or even just basic lookup for what types of nuts and bolts you should look for in a project. like it's actually just a really nice pleasant interface for working with hardware in general.
I disagree. I know what is a great e-commerce website -- in the sense the article is talking about.
Yeah, there's probably an item or two I've forgotten from that list, and yeah, other people likely to order from a site might have a slightly different list. But I have no doubt that I would recognize the same qualities on other websites that I and many (probably most) people would recognize as great -- or at the very minimum, as websites that don't suck.OTOH I don't know of any serious hobbyists (of whatever) who get the majority of their supplies from Amazon. When you ask, people generally say that selection is poor and quality is always highly suspect.
I agree that they aren't the cheapest, but the quality is unimpeachable and the shipping is fast and reasonable even for small (i.e. retail) orders. I also love how everything in the catalog includes a brief but concise description of what it is used for.
Also, at the risk of perpetuating (largely accurate) stereotypes about gender psychology, it's clear that the website is designed around the typical male shopper: I am shopping to fulfill a very specific need and I want to acquire the solution as quickly and efficiently as possible.
All in all, I'd say to be careful with stereotypes. I'm sure women love the McMaster-Carr shopping experience.
most of these online catalog parts houses have excellently functional websites.
but like, even back in the day distribution warehouses had excellent terminal based inventory search and ordering interfaces over packet switched networks.
anyone remember datanet?
Are there any electronics websites that actually organized like McMaster?
[1] https://displaysolutions.samsung.com/monitor/detail/1264/C49...
When filtering McMaster on the other hand, I have absolute confidence that I will find the part I’m looking for, assuming it is stocked. It’s really intuitive and robust. I’m sure much of this can be chalked up to the fact that McMaster has a much smaller and more specific catalog, but still.
EVERY online retailer should take notes on how McMaster is able to create psychological safety when browsing. It’s a real peace of mind, as strange as that may sound.
I love when a field value table has redundant values for 20mm, 2cm, 2.0cm, 20mm with a trailing space, etc. A lot of the value-add here from McMaster comes from pure data cleanup and categorization and cleaning up the categories and fields. That gets way harder to do on something the size of mouser or digikey though, they have a LOT of product types in the catalog, and tens of millions of products in their warehouses. Just cataloging it all is a massive amount of work.
I'd actually be curious what the data structure of the McMaster catalog is to support that. It's a cool website, it makes it seem so effortless to search for parts.
In practice (based on experience of selecting electronic components), I don't find this a big issue; after filtering on some other obvious, more binary fields, what left is often a small enough pool of values (like 16V, 16.0V, 12-20V, etc.) to be manually selected/checked.
So annoying that digikey doesn't do this, you have to click each value/range separately.
At McMaster, there would be one 555 timer, one utility op-amp that implements the LM741 spec, one low-noise op-amp, one 5V regulator, etc. They would all perform at or somewhat above average, but you wouldn't know precisely what you were getting.
There probably is room for a McMaster-like Digikey (or a simplified Digikey storefront for those who aren't picky about details), but it is unclear how large its market opportunity might be. It might look kinda like SparkFun.
A lot of the time, details in electronics really do matter. I think I've ordered almost every variation of the LM35 temperature sensor over my career. Sometimes you care more about price, sometimes you care more about accuracy. McMaster would probably only stock one of the grades, not sure which.
I was also intimidated by the huge table and hundreds of columns the first time I use Digi-Key, but only later realized how handy it is to have all the parameters listed together. It makes comparison subtle difference of each parts so much easier.
The filter above will also tell you existing enum values within the current showing list, so you will instantly get an idea you are comparing.
Again, both have their advantages, but I recommend give it a try. Finding parts isn't any harder this way.
1) the money to order whatever I wanted from them and 2) the knowledge to make cool things with all of those parts.
One of these days I'm going to find some time and do a few electronics projects. I've always been interested, and I did a fair amount of simple experimentation as a kid, but as an adult life has kept me busy with other pursuits.
I've seen a carparts store online and it had something really similar, a few words like "oil filter 2017 ford mustang" and you were literally looking at the part in the dropdown list, exactly what you want.
What do most sites do wrong?
1) Not loading the search data into RAM on the server so it is really fast - most companies could do this with their level of stock and only need a couple of GB per web server 2) Requiring a postback to start filtering 3) Not allowing the ordering of search terms to be changed e.g. "Ford Mustang Oil Filter" should match the same as "Oil Filter Ford Mustang" 4) Not having images for all results 5) Not being able to zoom in on images to check something is what you think it is 6) Using a stock image which doesn't necessarily match the item
For companies whose primary interface with the public is searching for stuff, most e-commerce sites I use are shamefully bad at both performance and usability.
Kudos to Mcmaster!
If you are spending your own money you might find other suppliers offer more value.
McMaster-Carr
Grainger
...and there are a few more.
if you want to make a sale all you can do is give them what they want
most stores have to convince the user that they want something, and that could be anything, and it doesn't much matter what it is.
people in the film/tv/production industry also use them to buy various fasteners and hardware for rigging lights, microphones, building complex camera systems onto gimbal platforms, etc.
My memories of McMaster from doing my hobbies is that it is outrageously expensive.
In my experience, the overhead of what you suggest is significant. Leading and instructing an employee or subcontractor, dealing with learning curves, etc. It sounds nice, but the logic in the GP comment is sound (i.e. that spending 2x or 3x the price for what you get can be worth it in most cases).
McMaster is "expensive" but it isn't like they are charging a crazy amount of money. They are just expensive.
I still use them over randos tho bc I know I'm going to get what I ordered. I never did not, but if I did, I'd have the correct part maybe even same day.
For common components, I need a parametric part so that I can instantly change the length, size or type. If my M12 becomes an M16, I want all the taps and C'Bores to adjust without any further input from myself.
For more expensive parts, it's nice to have a homegrown parametric part to minimize potential missorders.
Not every component is this trivially inexpensive, but we are working in a price range where it's very much worth paying the high McMaster prices. Let them hire the entry level CAD guy and spread the cost across many more prototypes than your company will make.
When you refine the product for mass production, then it is worth shaving pennies.
That is insane. Mad props to them
When we sold an old company to a PE group, all the McMaster loose stuff in the warehouse went back to them stacked in boxes on a pallet for them to work through. I wouldn't be surprised to learn our CM did the same thing after the sale.
Didn’t think of that. Still damn impressive
Digi-Key got this right: you can order DDP, which makes things quick & simple.
Incidentally, I am amazed that they don't have a meaningful competitor in the EU. It seems most companies here are stuck in the 80s and dedicate next to zero effort to their web ordering process.
None of the websites show prices if you don't have an account, and some of them even check if your business is legit so I just get refused. The one that rejected me also seems to only allow loading goods by fully sized truck so maybe it wasn't going to happen anyway, but it's so strange.
Anyway, lots of barriers, makes you think it's either a requirement that I as a layperson don't understand, or a hole in the market.
That said, what about German electronics parts sites like Conrad or Reichelt?
I even got a call from a nice, older gentleman who asked me why do I want a business account and could this be avoided somehow. Funny he should ask.
To me it appears that these companies see presence in the web as a necessary evil and would rather do business the old fashioned way: calling and in-person meetings.
Apparently so far they hadn't had any incentive to change.
I'd rather do business with anyone BUT Amazon, and its telling I still find myself having to order some bits from them every month.
But yeah for areas that are "old fashioned", what B2B has of experience they lack in getting on with the times.
Is it that much different from SaaS companies that instead of prices show a "contact sales" button?
I think they do it because they don't want to bother with small buyers. If people knew how much cheaper the parts are in these companies compared to hobby markets they would all want to buy few pieces to save money. This is not customer they want, they want customers that buy massive quantities.
- Almost nothing is on stock, most items have 10+ weeks backorder time.
- Ridiculously expensive, its common to find 2x prices than in other shops.
- Full with Chinesium crap (but some high quality items too), one can never be sure what they will get.
Its like a shitty Aliexpress
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/delivery-duty-paid.asp
The reality it that most EU customers already know the price before they order (or have a good idea it’s going to be 20% more). But they like to pretend they don’t.
Quoting the article: «Bolts are commonly specified by their thread size (e.g. 1/4"-20), and their length. I'm looking for a 1/4"-20 x 1" bolt, meaning that the bolt's diameter is 1/4" and its length is 1", so I select these filters.»
Why not go to the site and take a look. They, obviously, sell both metric and imperial bolts (and everything else).
It's not like Americans don't occasionally need metric bolts.
It’s becoming a lot more common than not in fact. Automobile industry for example is pretty heavy on using metric bolts / screws. It’s not a recent thing either, a 2004 F-250 I used to have had many (most?) bolts as metric.
I’ve mostly only seen that really with jumbo cheap quality “Father’s Day gift” type tool sets. If you are buying good quality tools, SAE and Metric are most often sold separately in my experience.
I'm so glad we can order from mcmaster here in canada, even though shipping is two days and usually min 30 USD even for tiny orders. All local industrial suppliers are truly stuck in the 80s. They have a paper catalog, without prices (if you're lucky you can get a PDF too). If you want prices, you have to call a salesperson, or send an email with an item list and wait a day or two to get a quote back. Then you get your quote, and some items are in stock, some others in stock "nearby" (next day delivery), others are backorder (1-X weeks). Then you have a lengthy phone or email back and forth to try and figure out what's in stock as a replacement.
So yeah, McMaster whenever possible and I'll gladly (have my employer) pay more for it. Shout-out to Misumi, too, however. I do mostly prototyping and I use so much of their customizable items, like rotary shafts. Much cheaper and faster than doing a drawing, sending it out to 3-8 local shops to try to find one that is quiet enough jobwise to take on a tiny one-off project and waiting 4 weeks for it, at a high price.
What in god’s name what!? How much business are they losing from that I wonder haha
In B2B we have Fabory: https://www.fabory.com
I've heard some mixed reviews about what it's like to work there, but I completely agree: as a customer, despite the (sometimes very high) prices, I was always incredibly happy with McMaster.
I'm in the same boat as far as looking for a MMC equivalent (they refuse to ship here at all)
Perhaps part of why their website is so good is because they deliver the goods. They follow through. Ever need a 4x8 sheet of copper? It gets delivered to your front door. Sooner than you expect, and at a very fair price.
MMC is mostly about not making the mistakes everybody else makes, which puts it near the top even before you consider what they do well.
They clearly are indifferent to customers except to the point required by law, or as needed to keep the cash flowing in.
It costs money to do the things that MMC does and Amazon prefers volume and revenue over the margins that MMC can command by providing quality service.
Also, my own experience was that I did not pay a "premium". I really did need 1/2 sheets of copper on a regular basis. I could get small pieces at a premium. I could get larger sheets by driving for a hour or ... I could pay about the same total cost or less and get them delivered to my door... This was not limited to a few items. I needed plastic bags, about quart size. Again I got just functional bags - not shoddy at all - at a very reasonable price. The same things at amazon would have been a) not functional or b) impossible to find among all the shoddiness.
I still check them though as they often have good enough parts for a lot less than OEM prices. Though I also still go to the OEM when I get tired of third party parts that don't work (after the switch issue above I went to my local auto parts store - the switch fits but doesn't work, I'll see what the OEM part does. Rock auto was $8, local store $20, deal $140 - but I trust the dealer switch will work for another 20 years)
Sad to say, comparing them to most other sites where you try (or attempt to try -- yes, often it is that bad) makes a case for saying, yes indeed, they are great!
Similarly excellent UI. One benefit that I take advantage of is free delivery to their local warehouse for in person pickup.
I don't know why more companies don't serve the customer with this.
You can pay them to open the local branch at 2 AM on a Sunday if you need a part and they have it in stock.
10 years ago I would have said Misumi's website was better than MMC. Unfortunately Misumi has gotten a bit less usable over the past decade, while McMaster has improved. Misumi's paper catalogue is incredible though and I surprise myself to say I would rather browse it than either their or McMaster's website.
Top quality configurable / customizable parts is certainly the way of the future, and it's amazing that Misumi has the whole process figured out. You can get a custom precision leadscrew of the length you want with the ends turned down to the diameter you want and the retaining ring grooves you want, and buy just one piece for a reasonable price. Any ordinary machine shop would reject the order unless you bought fifty or more.
How does that work? I have been searching the internet for stainless steel M8 x 20 set screws with a torx socket, maybe uncommon but straightforward. I have yet to find these anywhere outside of having them manufactured in china by truckload - I need maybe 100.
McMaster has everything (almost)!
Like this: https://ever-hardware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Torx-se...
Torx grub screws are super uncommon, I don't think I've ever seen one. Usually they have a hex socket (for an allen key), or occasionally they're slotted (for a flat-blade screwdriver).
Cap screw: https://us.misumi-ec.com/vona2/detail/221005020664/?Category...
Flat head: https://us.misumi-ec.com/vona2/detail/221005020686/?Category...
These are just standard parts though. Misumi's real configuration flexibility comes from parts that are parametrically defined. For example you can basically design a shaft by specing the material, coating, diameter, length, tolerances, and additional parametric features (external threading, tapped holes, flats, grooves, etc).
Here's an example: https://us.misumi-ec.com/vona2/detail/110302399810/
Once you've specified the parameters, it generates a price table including quantity discounts.