Hacker News Reader

Comment by fmajid | Hacker News Reader

The counterpoint to this is that a site like Amazon can still succeed to dominate the industry despite being a horrendous mess with nonfunctional search, a horrendous counterfeiting problem, and widespread review fraud. Does take the wind out of the sails of IA/UX purists somewhat.

View on HN

Amazon does not dominate the market that McMaster-Carr exists in. It's not even in the running. If you attempted to use Amazon for the type of project McMaster-Carr exists to support, you're going to get laughed at at best. MMC/Misumi/Grainger/etc. own industrial/mechanical, Digikey/Mouser/Arrow/etc. own electronics, RockAuto owns automotive aftermarket, etc. It's actually incredible how little fight Amazon has put up in these markets.

I feel like the part everyone is ignoring is that McMaster sells a very small breadth of things with incredible depth in its selection. The features people are raving about in this article and thread only make sense in the context of selling bolts for industrial use, and could never be implemented at a place like Amazon.

I don't love McMaster due to their insane over packaging and environmental issues, but this

> McMaster sells a very small breadth of things with incredible depth in its selection.

is not the case. They sell virtually anything anyone in an industrial environment could possibly be interested in. See other comments about "industrial trikes" and feel free to choose some arbitrary thing and try to find it there.

This is the frustrating thing for me, they are objectively very good at what they do, but in a completely unsustainable way.

What's wrong with mcmaster's packaging? Every time I've ordered, it's been plastic ziplocks or carboard boxes in a main box stuffed with brown paper. That's about as minimal as you can get.

If you have a problem with that, well, I have some bad news about how commerce, medical, and industry go about wastage in general. Bought 1000' of foobar filler rod and only used 50'? Chuck the rest cause it'll cost more in labor to deal with the excess.

Maybe they have changed, I'll admit it has been a few years. But I would routinely get a gigantic box that was 99% empty space. For example, I ordered ~8 feet of a specific brass rod (~1/4 inch diameter). Instead of a tube they used a rectilinear box that was big enough to fit a human inside.

Never mind industrial uses. It’s nearly impossible to find the right sized bolt or screw for a basic residential task on Amazon. For example, to replace a furniture screw that was lost during a move.

Amazon succeeds because they can get a tube of toothpaste, an onion, a washing machine, an extension cord, a can of paint and an iPad at your doorstep in under a day. Sure their search interface might not be the best but no one really cares. They are a logistics company, and don’t go too deep into any one niche.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com