The Myth of "One-Stop Shopping"
Arthur Nadata, President and CEO, Nu Horizons Electronics, Inc.

Have you ever worked hard to accomplish something but as you got closer to the goal you realized that it was not achievable? It happens. We must continue to strive but we don't always achieve, and sometimes the results of our quest are nothing like what we intended.

Well, we are all on quite a quest. Our lives have been changed forever by the impact of technology. Cell Phones, Laptops, Hand-Held PCs, Internet Appliances… and now Genetic Engineering, Nano-technology and Robotics; it seems nothing is the same. Our businesses and the way we conduct our business are going through rapid transformation as we strive to achieve better efficiencies and competitive advantage. Within our industry we have been on a quest for "one-stop shopping". We've been striving for critical mass… to be able to offer every service and every product that the customer could want under one roof.

The problem is; the bigger the biggest companies get and the more they offer the more it looks like one-stop shopping doesn't really exist. This may be controversial, but please consider these points:

• When you deal with a company that represents hundreds of suppliers do they know all of their suppliers? The hundreds of thousands of products?
• As Intellectual Property becomes more important the high technology suppliers keep proprietary early release information closer to the vest. They share with partners that don't represent their competitors… they don't share with the ones that do.
• Do you feel like a number when you deal with someone that does not know your business and does not seem to care?
• Consider your personal shopping habits. When you shop in person you are likely to concentrate your efforts in one or two vary large stores. Why? Because you don't have any time and you want to accomplish as much as possible in as small a piece of time as possible. So you compromise. You think it's "one-stop shopping" because you can buy milk, tennis shoes and a TV in the same place. You accept the fact that the people you are dealing with in that store don't know much about milk, tennis shoes or TVs because it only took you a half hour to buy them all. You may not pay attention to the size of the business you are buying from but you sure pay attention to the size of the store. After all, bigger equals better equals less time.
• Millions are now purchasing over the web. The eCommerce Business to Consumer market is now Tens of Billions, growing at over 50% per year. What happens when you buy on the web? If you do it regularly you already know this… You look for specialists. Now you deal with people that know tennis shoes on one site and people that know TVs on another. Time is no longer the issue; there's no need to put miles on your car and fight the traffic. Just click and UPS shows up the next day with everything you want. Do you care about the size of the company you are doing business with? If you are like me you don't. You care about ease of use, familiarity, knowledge, service, support and reliability. Which is closer to your vision of one-stop shopping?
• Business to Business eCommerce techniques provide the same capability. The more links you have the easier it is to do business with more people. Specialists that know their suppliers' semiconductor, passive or electrical product offerings down to the individual products and their applications. That know who to call to get answers if they don't have them. That care about your business and know who you are. With EDI, RosettaNet, eConnections, etc. it is easy to point, click and wait for UPS. Or pull from your consignment. Or obtain design assistance, pre-release product information, samples. Pretty much anything you need.

Specialists can't give you everything. But we pride ourselves on doing what we do better than anyone else. That saves you time.

Feel free to call me any time. I would love to hear your views and have an opportunity to show you something much better than one-stop shopping.

Nu Horizons Electronics is a specialist distributor; representing 25 high technology semiconductor supplier from 29 locations throughout North America.