11 ms·

The Home Depot Teams Up with Walmart to Expand Same-Day and Next-Day Delivery

186 points by mc32 5y ago

EricE 5y ago
It sure took Walmart a LONG time to wake up to the fact that their local stores could double as local distribution hubs. Better late than never, I suppose. Now if Walmart would just de-emphasize the scuzzy third party marketplace crap on their own site. If you use the Walmart App in the store it does filter all that stuff out; wish there was a way to do that on the main web site.
- U8dcN7vx 5y ago
  You can filter on the web site or in the app, not globally nor in some parts of the interface so it's a PITA but it is there.
- mattferderer 5y ago
  From what I can tell, people want "larger selection" but without "scuzzy third party marketplace crap". The 3rd party stuff is a huge reason I've started shopping less on Amazon.
- chasd00 5y ago
  Maybe hide a raspberry pi somewhere at a store and setup a vpn tunnel to the local network?
- mrfusion 5y ago
  How do they know you’re in the store?
- bob1029 5y ago
  I'm waiting for the day Walmart determines that they also have an ideal footprint for the nation's best low-latency edge services provider. How many Americans are more than 20ms away from their nearest supercenter? I have to imagine this is in the single-digit percentage territory. You don't need a whole lot of racks to do damage with the density of hardware you can purchase today. Switch is doing something like this with Fedex & Dell right now.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tristor 5y ago
I'm glad to hear this. My experience with Home Depot online ordering and pickup has been really good. My experience with Lowe's on the same has been absolutely horrible. Lowe's is so close to my house I don't even need to get on a highway, Home Depot is 20-25 minutes away. We don't shop at Lowe's because of how bad the experience has been on several projects. One thing in particular that has been a major problem is how common shoplifting / shrinkage is at home stores and how you can order items at Lowe's that show 10+ in stock on the website/app for pickup and they'll wait hours before finally cancelling your order, often long enough it's now impossible to order and pickup same day anywhere else. The smaller the item is physically in dimensions, the more likely this is. Home Depot doesn't seem to have this problem, because it seems they do a better job of tracking their inventory (or maybe at loss prevention). Neither store has anyone working there that knows anything, except maybe one dude who's semi-retired working in the electrical or plumbing sections. That's not usually an issue, but another mark against either store.
codefeenix 5y ago
look up D&H
lastofthemojito 5y ago
I'm surprised by a lot of the comments praising Home Depot's web site. I feel like every time I've intended to buy from them recently I'm befuddled by the variety of different ways to obtain things - "ship to store", "ship to home" or "scheduled delivery" (on top of browsing what's in stock in stores). I always seem to find a frustrating mix of things - "oh, my store has that part, but the other part is only in the store a few miles away, and this other thing I can have shipped, but shipping is only free over a certain threshold, which I might be able to reach if I shift these in-store items to be shipped, although not everything is eligible to be shipped....". I'm sure I'm not the only one who has given up on a purchase due to frustration like this. If Home Depot can find ways to handle these logistics themselves rather than make the customer do so, they could likely increase conversions. I'm not sure what that would look like - maybe having runners between stores could be part of it? Regardless, if I could just go to one Home Depot and pick up my entire order a day or so after ordering online, that'd be great.
- mindslight 5y ago
  FWIW the shipping minimum applies to the whole order, not just the products that are shipping. So $10 of items to be shipped along with $40 of items for in store pickup is fine. "Scheduled delivery" is the same inventory/process as store pickup, but paying someone to pick it up for you. "Ship to store" is the same process as ship to home, but might be handy in some rare situations. The two options represent two parallel logistics chains, and are quite similar to other brick and mortar stores. Once you know this, it's actually beneficial because you can choose whether to get the items soon by picking up, or choose from a much larger selection that can be shipped (possibly drop shipped). Although as you mention, it would be nice if they had a middleground option that would bring a medium selection to your local store for pickup within a fixed day or two, especially from other local stores.
throwoutway 5y ago
Isn’t WalMart and Lowe’s related to the same family /investors? This seems like a strange partnership
smileysteve 5y ago
Thank Goodness. Home Depot is pretty bad at grouping boxes; Your nearby store can have excess everything, but an online order might ship 5 pieces from 5 different stores in a ridiculous amount of boxes; and you'll get one item in 2 days, and 1 item 3 weeks later (which, anecdotally, you end up going to the nearby store for because you just want to complete the project this weekend.) For what they ship, it's pretty inefficient. Zola or Crate and Barrel might be worse; You buy people house waring gifts, but every size plate in the set comes in a different super large box with quadruple ultra thick bubble wrap, protecting the box inside.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  I made the mistake of ordering online from HD once. I found out that they assign the same SKU to different product iterations and you're gambling on whether the one you ordered is pulled from the store shelf.
- cjensen 5y ago
  Walmart will literally do the same thing. I order cereal from them because it's cheaper, and they have free delivery. But they split the order into two shipments -- one from the store, one from the warehouse. Walmart is not yet good at this type of logistics.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    This is assuming two shipments is "worse" from Walmart's perspective. Fulfilling 2 of an item from a store might trigger a resupply, which takes truck space, which pushes other, higher-margins out of stock or into danger levels, etc. Which isn't to say that Walmart's system isn't "dumb", but is to say that it's a very complex system, operating in realtime, and what look like dumb outcomes may in fact be optimized (according to whatever internal goals their logistics system has).
- jackmoore 5y ago
  This has been my exact experience with HD and Walmart. I hesitate to do online shopping with either as it seems so horribly wasteful. My last Walmart online order was various groceries that I assumed would be boxed together. Every item arrived from a different location. I don't ever again want someone driving to my house to deliver a big cardboard box stuffed with padding that contains a single bag of potato chips.
mindslight 5y ago
Please let this not be the beginning of the end of the Home Depot website experience, which currently meets my needs quite well. Every other store that has played around with this same day delivery gigwork scheme has eventually made their shipping option worse to push customers towards subscription services. In general "same day delivery" seems like a solution in search of a problem - if you need something ASAP, it's much more straightforward to just run to the store than to be waiting around for it to be delivered on someone else's schedule. And if you're not near a store, then it's not like a gigworker can magically conjure it either. Also never mind that half the stuff at Home Depot won't easily fit in the average car. I had a Walmart order for some shelving units that got converted to local delivery. The online status just said "delivered" with a blank picture. I found out later the driver had seen the large boxes, decided it wasn't worth it, and refused the pickup. I finally had to go to the store during their asinine online pickup hours to sort it out.
- mertd 5y ago
  Same day delivery is not for the stuff you need ASAP in my opinion. It's for the stuff you'll need on the *next day*. Like buying a specific tool on Saturday for a Sunday home repair project, which could be a big business for Home Depot.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    I have two queues, soon (store pickup) and eventually (shipping). I generally have enough errands queued up that if I need something the next day, I'll do an in store pickup in the evening/night, and get a few other things done with the same trip. I don't begrudge people who can benefit from gigwork delivery having that option. My problem is with the stores who seem to be running an unsustainable operation (either they're getting supremely awesome freight and packaging rates, or more likely taking a loss on many items that they ship), and choosing to change to a different and less convenient unsustainable operation rather than actually sorting out their inefficiencies (like figuring out how to avoid sending so many boxes with a single item in each).
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    That's an evem better point. Why doesn't Home Depot do tool rental delivery & pickup via gig work?
julianlam 5y ago
I feel that Home Depot partnering with WalMart's logistics is a good idea. Let Home Depot do what it does best. During the lockdowns in Ontario, Home Depot was drowning in curbside orders. A pickup would take an hour because of the sheer volume of orders. Similar orders at a less popular Home Hardware location would be available at a moment's notice and waiting by the door within minutes.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Here in the US I had good experience curbside with Home Depot. Walmart, on the other hand, never seems to have enough staff in a store to manage get a product in any way in a reasonable amount of time. My online experience with both is pretty good. Walmart can't quite figure out how to pack anything, and their website's inventory management looks like an excel spreadsheet uploaded by an intern, but it comes on time and usually isn't broken.
njovin 5y ago
Somewhat tangential, but I am super-impressed with Home Depot's e-commerce experience on the web side, and completely the opposite with WalMart. As I'm standing in a Home Depot store struggling to find an item, I can pull up the site, verify they have something in stock, and get a map of the store showing me where that thing is. This is an incredible consumer experience. Even when the thing I want isn't where it's supposed to be, showing that to a staffer usually gets an "Oh, yeah, we moved those to aisle Foo last week" response. On the flipside, when I go to WalMart's site the default search behavior is showing me numerous items from 3rd-party sellers that are not and will never be available in-store. They do have inventory information but you have to specifically filter for it and I find it much less reliable and difficult to navigate than Home Depot's. Hopefully they take pages from each others' playbooks.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Walmart doesn't even classify tomatoes as vegetables in some stores. They're in their own section. Every store looks the same and none of them are laid out that way.
- neeleshs 5y ago
  +1. I had to aisle browse to find stuff or call the store to see if something is in stock. This has been a major upgrade in experience. The inventory count is pretty accurate too (important when looking for remodels, flooring, trims etc)
- pibechorro 5y ago
  That site is only as good as the data. I have gone in to buy things marked in stock, which where not. They are sloppy with the back end of things.
- dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  I had covid 2 weeks ago, and I paid extra for a 2 hour food order from Walmart. I wanted something I forgot on an order I had made somewhere else. After 3 hours I got notice that some of the impulse buys I added were out of stock. Which is fine, but the only reason I added them was because they showed them to me. Then after 6 hours there was no word from them, and I knew the local store was closed. So I just canceled the order. I understand the retail employees are busy and things don't always go as planned, but there should have been some automation in place to help them here. Like don't offer items that are low stock, and automatically issue refunds on the 2 hour purchase charge after 4 hours. Maybe even automatically include an extra credit, as an incentive to try again.
silisili 5y ago
I'm a bit confounded by this one. Walmart has been seemingly directly aiming for HDs business. They introduced Hart, a tool brand that is for all intents and purposes a Ryobi clone, made by the same company, and expanded their general tool offerings. This makes me wonder if WM couldn't move tools, so decided to get money in a different way.
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  [revoco]
  - silisili 5y ago
    That's really interesting, and something I didn't realize. I know in the case of Ryobi and Hart power tools, both are made by TTI. Are you saying in that instance they subcontract out the work, or are you referring to a different class of tools?
    - bluGill 5y ago
      The comment you are replying to is gone... TTI probably makes Ryobi and Hart on the same assembly line. 80% of the parts will be the same. They will put a different case on as they come down the line. They might also have other differences inside, like a different set of gears (which match the case so you can't always mix and match). It costs more to support different products on the assembly line, so there are trade offs. It is quite likely that they started with the design for one to make the other. Note that I don't have any insight into TTI, just that the above is the normal way companies operate.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Obligatory tool brand/parent chart: https://pressurewashr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Tool-Brand-Behemoths-Tool-Companies-Who-Owns-What-Brands.jpg https://pressurewashr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Tool-Br... Although licensed manufacture is a whole 'nother wrinkle. That's why tear-downs are so popular, I guess.
ajay-b 5y ago
Might big box stores partner for delivery? Targrt, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and perhaps Ikea, all sharing a centralized logistics carrier.
- dd36 5y ago
  Petsmart and Petco use Doordash.
  - jackson1442 5y ago
    Walmart white-labels Doordash afaik. Target owns Shipt and I would assume is one of Walmart's biggest competitors so definitely don't see that happening.
bbarn 5y ago
Maybe this makes me sound like a luddite, but I think same and next day delivery is bad for us all. I left the US 2 years ago, where I was ordering nearly everything from Amazon, and moved to a place where it's significantly difficult to get "stuff" without a long drive or a few week's wait time. The initial lifestyle change was a little rough, but I found myself over time just accepting I didn't need all the crap I used to order. People are fast to call out amazon's treatment of workers, small businesses, etc., but here we see other companies doing their best to emulate it because people still dump money at Amazon.
- lm28469 5y ago
  Wait, how are we supposed to live without same day delivery toilet paper ? /s People complain about the destruction of small and/or local businesses but at the same time order everything online these days. If you're a luddite I guess I'm a fucking cave man, I still can't get over the fact that people get groceries delivered. It's aligned with our society trajectory though, instant feedback, convenience before anything, no friction, as little human contact as possible, everything as a service, &c. It doesn't matter if the whole system is run by modern day salves or if pollution is literally destroying our planet, we need our goddamn same day delivery toilet paper
  - chasd00 5y ago
    ironically, it was all suppose to give us more free time. Yet, there are whole subcultures and religions dedicated to time management now. It's funny in a sad clown sort of way.
    - Loughla 5y ago
      In my own life, the consumerism thing that has given me the most headaches lately is that people have figured out the easiest way to make money, a lot of money, really quickly, in the area I live, is to start a storage unit business. They're full almost immediately. People have so much stuff they will rent multiple empty garages just to store shit no one cares about. I'm talking furniture, electronics, household white goods, clothes, all kinds of stuff. Just clutter and hoard. It honestly, genuinely, blows my mind.
mattlondon 5y ago
I wish we had more things like this in the UK. Amazon have won with reliable and dependable next-day shipping, but often the items you get are awful quality. Yet you "have to" order from Amazon because delivery from any other website is usually "8-10 working days" or an extra £8.99 for next-day of £15.99 if tomorrow happens to be Saturday or Sunday etc, or they require a signature and won't leave it so you end up making an hour round trip to go get your parcel from some warehouse somewhere because they refused to deliver etc .. Fuck it just get something from Amazon. Sigh. I want to buy decent quality stuff from other retailers but their shipping is really spoiling it.
- speps 5y ago
  At least in the UK, we have Argos and ScrewFix and that covers most of the things Amazon would need to deliver next day for me but I can pick it up same day instead.
- DharmaPolice 5y ago
  Yeah, I share this experience. I assist elderly relatives with some of their online purchases and any time we don't use Amazon there's a 50% chance it's a bizarre ordeal. The speed of delivery is the main selling point but for a lot of items it doesn't matter if it's one day or three days or five days. It becomes a problem when it's just not delivered at all or it takes 3-4 weeks or is delivered to the wrong address. A lot of it seems to be management of third party delivery firms. I don't remember ever having to interact with a courier directly with an Amazon order (even for the orders not delivered by Amazon Logistics). It's frustratingly frequent with most other retailers.
- aembleton 5y ago
  Strange, I find eBay when filtered to UK sellers gives me a good experience. Usually no postage charge and I get the item in a few days. I don't have Amazon Prime so the experience is about the same for me. For anything I need immediately, I check out Argos, Screwfix or Toolstation. Sometimes I'll walk at lunchtime to the local hardware store if I want to check the item in person against say a rusted piece. But, not everyone has that option.

186 points by mc32 5y ago

It sure took Walmart a LONG time to wake up to the fact that their local stores could double as local distribution hubs. Better late than never, I suppose. Now if Walmart would just de-emphasize the scuzzy third party marketplace crap on their own site. If you use the Walmart App in the store it does filter all that stuff out; wish there was a way to do that on the main web site.

U8dcN7vx 5y ago
You can filter on the web site or in the app, not globally nor in some parts of the interface so it's a PITA but it is there.
mattferderer 5y ago
From what I can tell, people want "larger selection" but without "scuzzy third party marketplace crap". The 3rd party stuff is a huge reason I've started shopping less on Amazon.
chasd00 5y ago
Maybe hide a raspberry pi somewhere at a store and setup a vpn tunnel to the local network?
mrfusion 5y ago
How do they know you’re in the store?
bob1029 5y ago
I'm waiting for the day Walmart determines that they also have an ideal footprint for the nation's best low-latency edge services provider. How many Americans are more than 20ms away from their nearest supercenter? I have to imagine this is in the single-digit percentage territory. You don't need a whole lot of racks to do damage with the density of hardware you can purchase today. Switch is doing something like this with Fedex & Dell right now.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tristor 5y ago

I'm glad to hear this. My experience with Home Depot online ordering and pickup has been really good. My experience with Lowe's on the same has been absolutely horrible. Lowe's is so close to my house I don't even need to get on a highway, Home Depot is 20-25 minutes away. We don't shop at Lowe's because of how bad the experience has been on several projects. One thing in particular that has been a major problem is how common shoplifting / shrinkage is at home stores and how you can order items at Lowe's that show 10+ in stock on the website/app for pickup and they'll wait hours before finally cancelling your order, often long enough it's now impossible to order and pickup same day anywhere else. The smaller the item is physically in dimensions, the more likely this is. Home Depot doesn't seem to have this problem, because it seems they do a better job of tracking their inventory (or maybe at loss prevention). Neither store has anyone working there that knows anything, except maybe one dude who's semi-retired working in the electrical or plumbing sections. That's not usually an issue, but another mark against either store.

codefeenix 5y ago

look up D&H

lastofthemojito 5y ago

I'm surprised by a lot of the comments praising Home Depot's web site. I feel like every time I've intended to buy from them recently I'm befuddled by the variety of different ways to obtain things - "ship to store", "ship to home" or "scheduled delivery" (on top of browsing what's in stock in stores). I always seem to find a frustrating mix of things - "oh, my store has that part, but the other part is only in the store a few miles away, and this other thing I can have shipped, but shipping is only free over a certain threshold, which I might be able to reach if I shift these in-store items to be shipped, although not everything is eligible to be shipped....". I'm sure I'm not the only one who has given up on a purchase due to frustration like this. If Home Depot can find ways to handle these logistics themselves rather than make the customer do so, they could likely increase conversions. I'm not sure what that would look like - maybe having runners between stores could be part of it? Regardless, if I could just go to one Home Depot and pick up my entire order a day or so after ordering online, that'd be great.

mindslight 5y ago
FWIW the shipping minimum applies to the whole order, not just the products that are shipping. So $10 of items to be shipped along with $40 of items for in store pickup is fine. "Scheduled delivery" is the same inventory/process as store pickup, but paying someone to pick it up for you. "Ship to store" is the same process as ship to home, but might be handy in some rare situations. The two options represent two parallel logistics chains, and are quite similar to other brick and mortar stores. Once you know this, it's actually beneficial because you can choose whether to get the items soon by picking up, or choose from a much larger selection that can be shipped (possibly drop shipped). Although as you mention, it would be nice if they had a middleground option that would bring a medium selection to your local store for pickup within a fixed day or two, especially from other local stores.

throwoutway 5y ago

Isn’t WalMart and Lowe’s related to the same family /investors? This seems like a strange partnership

smileysteve 5y ago

Thank Goodness. Home Depot is pretty bad at grouping boxes; Your nearby store can have excess everything, but an online order might ship 5 pieces from 5 different stores in a ridiculous amount of boxes; and you'll get one item in 2 days, and 1 item 3 weeks later (which, anecdotally, you end up going to the nearby store for because you just want to complete the project this weekend.) For what they ship, it's pretty inefficient. Zola or Crate and Barrel might be worse; You buy people house waring gifts, but every size plate in the set comes in a different super large box with quadruple ultra thick bubble wrap, protecting the box inside.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
I made the mistake of ordering online from HD once. I found out that they assign the same SKU to different product iterations and you're gambling on whether the one you ordered is pulled from the store shelf.
cjensen 5y ago
Walmart will literally do the same thing. I order cereal from them because it's cheaper, and they have free delivery. But they split the order into two shipments -- one from the store, one from the warehouse. Walmart is not yet good at this type of logistics.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  This is assuming two shipments is "worse" from Walmart's perspective. Fulfilling 2 of an item from a store might trigger a resupply, which takes truck space, which pushes other, higher-margins out of stock or into danger levels, etc. Which isn't to say that Walmart's system isn't "dumb", but is to say that it's a very complex system, operating in realtime, and what look like dumb outcomes may in fact be optimized (according to whatever internal goals their logistics system has).
jackmoore 5y ago
This has been my exact experience with HD and Walmart. I hesitate to do online shopping with either as it seems so horribly wasteful. My last Walmart online order was various groceries that I assumed would be boxed together. Every item arrived from a different location. I don't ever again want someone driving to my house to deliver a big cardboard box stuffed with padding that contains a single bag of potato chips.

mindslight 5y ago

Please let this not be the beginning of the end of the Home Depot website experience, which currently meets my needs quite well. Every other store that has played around with this same day delivery gigwork scheme has eventually made their shipping option worse to push customers towards subscription services. In general "same day delivery" seems like a solution in search of a problem - if you need something ASAP, it's much more straightforward to just run to the store than to be waiting around for it to be delivered on someone else's schedule. And if you're not near a store, then it's not like a gigworker can magically conjure it either. Also never mind that half the stuff at Home Depot won't easily fit in the average car. I had a Walmart order for some shelving units that got converted to local delivery. The online status just said "delivered" with a blank picture. I found out later the driver had seen the large boxes, decided it wasn't worth it, and refused the pickup. I finally had to go to the store during their asinine online pickup hours to sort it out.

mertd 5y ago
Same day delivery is not for the stuff you need ASAP in my opinion. It's for the stuff you'll need on the *next day*. Like buying a specific tool on Saturday for a Sunday home repair project, which could be a big business for Home Depot.
- mindslight 5y ago
  I have two queues, soon (store pickup) and eventually (shipping). I generally have enough errands queued up that if I need something the next day, I'll do an in store pickup in the evening/night, and get a few other things done with the same trip. I don't begrudge people who can benefit from gigwork delivery having that option. My problem is with the stores who seem to be running an unsustainable operation (either they're getting supremely awesome freight and packaging rates, or more likely taking a loss on many items that they ship), and choosing to change to a different and less convenient unsustainable operation rather than actually sorting out their inefficiencies (like figuring out how to avoid sending so many boxes with a single item in each).
- ethbr0 5y ago
  That's an evem better point. Why doesn't Home Depot do tool rental delivery & pickup via gig work?

julianlam 5y ago

I feel that Home Depot partnering with WalMart's logistics is a good idea. Let Home Depot do what it does best. During the lockdowns in Ontario, Home Depot was drowning in curbside orders. A pickup would take an hour because of the sheer volume of orders. Similar orders at a less popular Home Hardware location would be available at a moment's notice and waiting by the door within minutes.

kube-system 5y ago
Here in the US I had good experience curbside with Home Depot. Walmart, on the other hand, never seems to have enough staff in a store to manage get a product in any way in a reasonable amount of time. My online experience with both is pretty good. Walmart can't quite figure out how to pack anything, and their website's inventory management looks like an excel spreadsheet uploaded by an intern, but it comes on time and usually isn't broken.

njovin 5y ago

Somewhat tangential, but I am super-impressed with Home Depot's e-commerce experience on the web side, and completely the opposite with WalMart. As I'm standing in a Home Depot store struggling to find an item, I can pull up the site, verify they have something in stock, and get a map of the store showing me where that thing is. This is an incredible consumer experience. Even when the thing I want isn't where it's supposed to be, showing that to a staffer usually gets an "Oh, yeah, we moved those to aisle Foo last week" response. On the flipside, when I go to WalMart's site the default search behavior is showing me numerous items from 3rd-party sellers that are not and will never be available in-store. They do have inventory information but you have to specifically filter for it and I find it much less reliable and difficult to navigate than Home Depot's. Hopefully they take pages from each others' playbooks.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Walmart doesn't even classify tomatoes as vegetables in some stores. They're in their own section. Every store looks the same and none of them are laid out that way.
neeleshs 5y ago
+1. I had to aisle browse to find stuff or call the store to see if something is in stock. This has been a major upgrade in experience. The inventory count is pretty accurate too (important when looking for remodels, flooring, trims etc)
pibechorro 5y ago
That site is only as good as the data. I have gone in to buy things marked in stock, which where not. They are sloppy with the back end of things.
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
I had covid 2 weeks ago, and I paid extra for a 2 hour food order from Walmart. I wanted something I forgot on an order I had made somewhere else. After 3 hours I got notice that some of the impulse buys I added were out of stock. Which is fine, but the only reason I added them was because they showed them to me. Then after 6 hours there was no word from them, and I knew the local store was closed. So I just canceled the order. I understand the retail employees are busy and things don't always go as planned, but there should have been some automation in place to help them here. Like don't offer items that are low stock, and automatically issue refunds on the 2 hour purchase charge after 4 hours. Maybe even automatically include an extra credit, as an incentive to try again.

silisili 5y ago

I'm a bit confounded by this one. Walmart has been seemingly directly aiming for HDs business. They introduced Hart, a tool brand that is for all intents and purposes a Ryobi clone, made by the same company, and expanded their general tool offerings. This makes me wonder if WM couldn't move tools, so decided to get money in a different way.

ARandomerDude 5y ago
[revoco]
- silisili 5y ago
  That's really interesting, and something I didn't realize. I know in the case of Ryobi and Hart power tools, both are made by TTI. Are you saying in that instance they subcontract out the work, or are you referring to a different class of tools?
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The comment you are replying to is gone... TTI probably makes Ryobi and Hart on the same assembly line. 80% of the parts will be the same. They will put a different case on as they come down the line. They might also have other differences inside, like a different set of gears (which match the case so you can't always mix and match). It costs more to support different products on the assembly line, so there are trade offs. It is quite likely that they started with the design for one to make the other. Note that I don't have any insight into TTI, just that the above is the normal way companies operate.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Obligatory tool brand/parent chart: https://pressurewashr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Tool-Brand-Behemoths-Tool-Companies-Who-Owns-What-Brands.jpg https://pressurewashr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Tool-Br... Although licensed manufacture is a whole 'nother wrinkle. That's why tear-downs are so popular, I guess.

ajay-b 5y ago

Might big box stores partner for delivery? Targrt, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, and perhaps Ikea, all sharing a centralized logistics carrier.

dd36 5y ago
Petsmart and Petco use Doordash.
- jackson1442 5y ago
  Walmart white-labels Doordash afaik. Target owns Shipt and I would assume is one of Walmart's biggest competitors so definitely don't see that happening.

bbarn 5y ago

Maybe this makes me sound like a luddite, but I think same and next day delivery is bad for us all. I left the US 2 years ago, where I was ordering nearly everything from Amazon, and moved to a place where it's significantly difficult to get "stuff" without a long drive or a few week's wait time. The initial lifestyle change was a little rough, but I found myself over time just accepting I didn't need all the crap I used to order. People are fast to call out amazon's treatment of workers, small businesses, etc., but here we see other companies doing their best to emulate it because people still dump money at Amazon.

lm28469 5y ago
Wait, how are we supposed to live without same day delivery toilet paper ? /s People complain about the destruction of small and/or local businesses but at the same time order everything online these days. If you're a luddite I guess I'm a fucking cave man, I still can't get over the fact that people get groceries delivered. It's aligned with our society trajectory though, instant feedback, convenience before anything, no friction, as little human contact as possible, everything as a service, &c. It doesn't matter if the whole system is run by modern day salves or if pollution is literally destroying our planet, we need our goddamn same day delivery toilet paper
- chasd00 5y ago
  ironically, it was all suppose to give us more free time. Yet, there are whole subcultures and religions dedicated to time management now. It's funny in a sad clown sort of way.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    In my own life, the consumerism thing that has given me the most headaches lately is that people have figured out the easiest way to make money, a lot of money, really quickly, in the area I live, is to start a storage unit business. They're full almost immediately. People have so much stuff they will rent multiple empty garages just to store shit no one cares about. I'm talking furniture, electronics, household white goods, clothes, all kinds of stuff. Just clutter and hoard. It honestly, genuinely, blows my mind.

mattlondon 5y ago

I wish we had more things like this in the UK. Amazon have won with reliable and dependable next-day shipping, but often the items you get are awful quality. Yet you "have to" order from Amazon because delivery from any other website is usually "8-10 working days" or an extra £8.99 for next-day of £15.99 if tomorrow happens to be Saturday or Sunday etc, or they require a signature and won't leave it so you end up making an hour round trip to go get your parcel from some warehouse somewhere because they refused to deliver etc .. Fuck it just get something from Amazon. Sigh. I want to buy decent quality stuff from other retailers but their shipping is really spoiling it.

speps 5y ago
At least in the UK, we have Argos and ScrewFix and that covers most of the things Amazon would need to deliver next day for me but I can pick it up same day instead.
DharmaPolice 5y ago
Yeah, I share this experience. I assist elderly relatives with some of their online purchases and any time we don't use Amazon there's a 50% chance it's a bizarre ordeal. The speed of delivery is the main selling point but for a lot of items it doesn't matter if it's one day or three days or five days. It becomes a problem when it's just not delivered at all or it takes 3-4 weeks or is delivered to the wrong address. A lot of it seems to be management of third party delivery firms. I don't remember ever having to interact with a courier directly with an Amazon order (even for the orders not delivered by Amazon Logistics). It's frustratingly frequent with most other retailers.
aembleton 5y ago
Strange, I find eBay when filtered to UK sellers gives me a good experience. Usually no postage charge and I get the item in a few days. I don't have Amazon Prime so the experience is about the same for me. For anything I need immediately, I check out Argos, Screwfix or Toolstation. Sometimes I'll walk at lunchtime to the local hardware store if I want to check the item in person against say a rusted piece. But, not everyone has that option.