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I normally use Farnell/RS (I am not sure they can be described as catalogue companies any more - I have not looked at a catalogue for years!). I have used Digikey/Mouser where necessary to obtain parts I cannot get from RS/Farnell. However, I stick to RS/Farnell normally for speed. I work in R&D and next day delivery is more important than cost (parts from the USA tend to be cheaper before you factor in delivery charges). An 8pm cut off time for next day delivery is pretty good.
Ordering from Newark is transparent with a Farnell account, other than the extra delay and delivery charge.
One of the things I like about Digikey is "digi reels". Basically for a $7 additional fee, they will take any size cut tape, add header and footer and put it on a reel for you. Great for low volume automated assembly. I think Mouser offers something similar.
Located in the U.S., I use both Digikey and Mouser as my primary distributors for similar reasons cited by Keith.
They both offer good customer service and very reasonable Next and Two Day shipping options. I've not had any bad experiences with either of these two distributors.
Mouser has now a delivery centre in Hongkong. and fairly fast delivery to Australia. Sometimes your delivery is split in 2 lots, one from HK the other from USA,
don't think there was any extra delivery charge when that happened.
we have Farnel/oh um now called Element ?@#!?? too. if you want cheaper Mouser is the go. but Farnel's trade counter is pretty good too!
Hi Keith, thanks for that. I'm a business student and considering using the industry as a case study. I guess what I'm trying to work out is whether Digikey is a disruptive business model (one warehouse versus several). Thanks again
Digikey is trying to draw people away from RS/Farnell - free delivery for orders over £50 etc. I do work for quite a few companies who use Digikey for some of their parts so they are making sales but usually it seems to be for the same reason as me - getting parts that they cannot get from RS/Farnell. So, they do not appear to be taking sales away from RS/Farnell (yet). I guess the alternative would be that I don't design in parts that are hard to get, but the reality is that the parts I might want to use are not "rare" - just not stocked by RS/Farnell.
As an example, a customer's BOM has 64 different parts, 6 of which are from Digikey, the rest from Farnell. The parts from Digikey are from Analog Devices, Molex, ON Semiconductor and National Semiconductor so they are really mainstream parts, just not stocked here. They may be obtainable from other distributors but not quickly and it also becomes a pain if you have to buy from 6 different places.
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