> I could imagine either dirt cheap labor in well laid out warehouses or some form of automated picking solution. i'd love to see a proper dive/writeup from so

> I could imagine either dirt cheap labor in well laid out warehouses or some form of automated picking solution. i'd love to see a proper dive/writeup from someone in-the-know. lacking that, here's a third, completely speculative theory: from what i hear, these big distributors are excellent at providing quick turnaround time. suppose that in order to guarantee this for large customers -- who presumably provide the bulk of revenue and who most value this service -- DigiKey must continually over-provision its operations. and so whenever there isn't a number of outstanding rush orders, there's extra staff available, at no marginal cost to the business, to assist the little guy.