So I ordered a selection of stuff online for the house. Bits and bobs, through Leroy’s (sorta, Homebase type place). Some coming direct and some from folk who use the platform to sell.
The first to arrive is the bit coming from Bergamo, in Italy. The furthest source arrives first, of course.
The furthest source arrives first, of course.
Which tends to prove your point that physical distance and trading proximity are not the same thing.
Well, yes. It would now seem that the Portuguese and Italian carpet markets are integrated…..
You’re reminding me of Adam chatting to me at the library.
He was showing me this graph of the rise in price of cryptocurrencies. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. So he asked me when I thought it’s value would fall.
I naturally said, ‘When I buy some.’
Earlier in the year, I had to buy a Part for a Thing. Cost about £20, all in with shipping. Turns out the sole European agent is in the Netherlands. So I went through the usual website rigmarole only to be told at the very last moment before hitting “Order” that “Since Brexit, we cannot ship goods valued less than €250 to the UK”. (Might not have been 250, but you get the idea.)
The manufacturer’s in Taiwan. So I tried its website. Same price, same shipping. The Part popped through my door less than a week later.
through Leroy’s (sorta, Homebase type place)
Shortly to be in administration, then.
Sam,
I’ve ordered a few laptop bits through AliExpress. Mostly, just things I couldn’t get here like a single replacement key and some screws. Takes about2 weeks to get here from China and costs about £5 for each. The alternative is a whole new keyboard from Dell which is about £80.
I’ve bought stuff from AliExpress too. The pricing is stupidly low in our terms but if they can sell & ship at that price, who am I to argue?
I’ve bought loads of gear through AliExpress. You don’t by from. They’re a site markets Chinse suppliers. Most of them, I would imagine, wholesalers rather than manufacturers by the lines they offer.
All been relatively trouble free. Certainly far better than using any Spanish net based operation. Out of China the average lead time’s a couple of weeks but they forward load popular stuff to EU based operations. So it’s been a couple of days for some items. The money side you’re dealing with AE. Very efficient & reliable. You have a problem with something – received damaged or faulty, not as described, incorrect item – normally they just refund the whole payment – item plus shipping- within a day or two. I’ve never been asked to return anything. Non-received or non-dispatched, there’s usually a time guarantee to run out. Can be as little as 10 days. For several thousand quids worth of assorted items, for me they’ve hit 97 or 98% reliability.
I suppose the only problems I’ve had have been here. At first they were using the Spanish postal service for last mile. Which strongly resembles Royal Mail. I have a PO box at their local office. So I’d see stuff arriving & clearing customs in Madrid & then sitting there for a fortnight or vanishing never to be seen again. And a lot of stuff arriving damaged packaging/contents. Then they switched to various domestic carriers require delivery to home. Problem being they tell you you had a delivery some time tomorrow, then fail to deliver. Now they switched to mostly a collection point option & everything’s arriving timely & undamaged.
Use a Spanish on-line retailer? I’d sooner saw a leg off. Last experience, we ordered a simple room screen for 7 days dispatch. A month later it still hadn’t arrived An e-mail to the supplierreturned- “Not in Stock” with no prediction when it would be. Eventually they refunded. Not a hint of an apology. The concept of entering an agreement which you then discharge in an efficient & timely manner simply isn’t in the Spanish culture. There may even be a a law against it.
Leroy Merlin’s a French company like Brico Depot, isn’t it? On the other hand I’ve seen what the Spanish can do to Carrefour. Are the Ports as bad?
Further to the above: Heaven forbid I should venture onto the fragrant Carrie’s ground but a lot of what I’ve been buying is women’s clothes. I have a market for them. You can buy most of the stuff that’s sold by Shien, LightInTheBox & similar drop-shippers as well as a lot of stuff you can’t. What you’re really getting is the drop-shipping without the drop-shipper’s marketing package wrapped around it. So much of it’s cheaper. And from what I’ve heard about the drop-shippers & their after-sales service I’d far rather be dealing with AliExpress
BiS
Interesting about AliExpress. I’d never heard of them until a week or so back when I saw a poster on the Tube.
Gods, BiS… Spacing… That gave me a headache reading…
That said… Early delivery usually simply means the seller also got his *second backup* order on time, and needs to get rid of it.
Most internet resellers have embraced JIT,,,
The concept of actually having any stock is…. ridicoulous… And Things will always arrive On Time….
Most of the discounted stuff you find online is the *backup* order coming in when the seller didn’t expect it to happen..
Which concept should be enough to have anyone regularly reading this Blog to try it. Escept that it’s Too Late, and why do you thing Amazon got so big to begin with?
And let’s be fair…. delivery nowadays might be *late*… But it beats shipwrecks and uncertainties…
And if all else fails….. get a Lawyer who speaks Cantonese……
@Norman…. Not quite sure if you’ve been hiding under the proverbial rock, or trying to take the absolute piss,,, while failing…
The concept of actually having any stock is…. ridicoulous…
Why’s it ridicoulous? One of the deterrents to distance purchasing is the wait for delivery. So the incentive is to get delivery times to the minimum. So with popular items it makes sense to move stocks close to your market. And of course they have stocks. What do you think they do with women’s togs? Make them to order? They will have done a production run & currently on their 17th production run since. Next year’s clothes are being made now. I’ve been in the rag trade. I know how it works. If you’ve got the stuff made & you’ve a good idea of the sizing ratios you need for your market you move them nearer that market, rather than having them cluttering up your warehouse. And your shipping will be cheaper because you’re contracting ahead. Justintime is expensive on shipping costs.
It’s also fairly obvious Amazon & its sellers are doing something similar. Something I ordered from an Amazon seller at 18:30 was at the collection point at 14:00 next day. You got any idea how big this country is? You’d have trouble driving from one end to the other in 20 hours. So they must be stocking it somewhere in this region.
In latest news.
Ellen DeGeneres ‘leaves US’ for Cotswolds following Trump win
Their gain your loss.
BiS is correct. The supply chain upheavals of the pandemic (and others) have driven a move from ‘just in time’ to ‘just in case’ strategies, which involve holding greater inventory. This is the prime reason why warehouse rents have continued to rise pretty much worldwide, despite a shakier economy.
It’s nothing to do with pandemic supply chain upheavals, Marius. It’s how a lot of industry works. Most companies do not make one product. They’re sub-contractors who have a capability in a certain area. Like the garment industry. It’s efficient to do a production run of one particular item then move on to the next. It’s not just the garment industry. Take something like an electrical item. You think the name company on the label does plastic mouldings, coil winding, cable making, chassis pressings etc? Mostly they assemble components. There wouldn’t be work enough in any particular component to make it worthwhile operating. So they make components for multiple label companies. They do a production run of a particular plastic moulding shell, which they either hold in stock awaiting a call. Or they go to the assembler who holds them. And the assembler does production runs on the different products they put their label on. Now they’re holding stocks of the finished product.
You can’t make things to order. it would be a hellishly expensive way to do it. You do efficient batch production
Told this story before. The dry cleaners lost one of the epaulettes of my Pierre Cardin trenchcoat. (And paid dearly for it) Pierre Cardin don’t make anything. Not even the labels sewn into their clothes. My contacts over in Paris got me the details of the company in Leicester who made it. So I phoned their production manager. He remembered the garment, didn’t have any of the epaulettes because that was a run they did some years back. But he knew how it was made. Two identical pieces of fabric sewn back to back. So it was just a matter of getting someone to split the one I had & re-back the two pieces with a close match material. Cost me £50. What was the company in Leicester currently making? Industrial overalls retail at £15.
Think this through. The Leicester company makes neither woven fabric nor spun sewing thread nor buttons. All of those will have been sourced by Cardin’s designers. There wouldn’t be enough of any of them required to commission production runs. So the designers were drawing on the stocks of the manufacturers’ production runs. So yes, companies carry stocks somewhere in the system.
BiS: let’s hope she gets along with Clarkson…