Comment by jwr
3 years ago
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.
> 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.
not for long ;)
>without prices
What in god’s name what!? How much business are they losing from that I wonder haha
The B2B vacuum of Europe. So many voids to fill, for the ones daring to share product details and, gasp, prices, online.
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'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.
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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.
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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 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.
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> Yeah what is going on with B2B in Europe and not showing prices?
Is it that much different from SaaS companies that instead of prices show a "contact sales" button?
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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.
In B2B we have Fabory: https://www.fabory.com
That's unfortunate you lost Zoro. They still operate in the US - I use them a lot.
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.
I tried googling DDP but couldn't find it - do you know the URL?
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.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/delivery-duty-paid.asp
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.
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.
There is misumi but it is not exactly the same market
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.
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.
Conrad is a shitshow in my country.
- 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
LOL. I discovered Conrad before I found out about AliExpress. I thought AE was a shitty Conrad with much better pricing but slower delivery.
and Canada, though only to business and school addresses only.
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.
Sole proprietorships are businesses. One could just put their name in the “company name” field.
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You could also put "Trucking". Joe Blow Trucking
I used accu.co.uk (in the U.K, not EU) for a project, and they were fantastic. I’m only a hobbyist though. Can someone explain what it is missing?
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.»
Maybe because the site is hard-coded for the US imperial system?
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 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.
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