Yup, worked in a US lab back around 2005. Now back in the EU, I find that in most areas online stores have caught up, but on hardware nothing yet comes close to

Yup, worked in a US lab back around 2005. Now back in the EU, I find that in most areas online stores have caught up, but on hardware nothing yet comes close to McMaster-Carr. One thing I only realized when living in the US is that the reason that online shopping is so much more advanced in the US than in the EU is not just the more homogeneous market. Due to tax rules (state sales tax on mail orders) mail order has always had a competitive edge in the US, leading to a many companies already being set up with a deep back-catalogue and strong inventory metadata when the internet hit.