Back in 2005, I ordered my sister an iPod on apple.com, complete with custom etched message on the back on Monday afternoon. It was shipped from China and arrived in New York on Thursday, not even 70 hours later.
It seems like Apple has figured out what things are really worth spending money on and invested heavily in those those things. Almost as if they had applied the Taguchi method to the enterprise.
Certainly, the speed with which materials and products move through a company is a thing worth optimizing.
Custom-etched iPods mean a real customer has in fact paid full price for the product, so it can be shipped directly to the customer for less than the total cost of routing it thru the brick-and-mortar pipeline (truck to store, inventory, shelve, pay for store space & utilities, pay in-store staff overhead, etc.).
True, the saving of engraving on the production line is probably enough to offset the cost of posting a single item.
Interestingly there was recently an analysis of why Apple offer free engraving. It's to reduce the number of used products (iPods especially) on the market.
Since the product is ubiquitous, built to last and doesn't change much - the used market would be a significant drain on sales.
Comments
I believe it.
Back in 2005, I ordered my sister an iPod on apple.com, complete with custom etched message on the back on Monday afternoon. It was shipped from China and arrived in New York on Thursday, not even 70 hours later.
It seems like Apple has figured out what things are really worth spending money on and invested heavily in those those things. Almost as if they had applied the Taguchi method to the enterprise.
Certainly, the speed with which materials and products move through a company is a thing worth optimizing.
So who does it help for them to be paying to airfreight an iPod vs having built them 10days in advance and seafreighted them?
Custom-etched iPods mean a real customer has in fact paid full price for the product, so it can be shipped directly to the customer for less than the total cost of routing it thru the brick-and-mortar pipeline (truck to store, inventory, shelve, pay for store space & utilities, pay in-store staff overhead, etc.).
True, the saving of engraving on the production line is probably enough to offset the cost of posting a single item.
Interestingly there was recently an analysis of why Apple offer free engraving. It's to reduce the number of used products (iPods especially) on the market.
Since the product is ubiquitous, built to last and doesn't change much - the used market would be a significant drain on sales.
sea freight isn't 10 days
My mistake, it's 14days China-Vancouver, it's 10days Europe to NY