Scientific shopping
by Chemjobber on Mar 17 2010 (3107 Views)
In the process of explaining the process of buying scientific equipment to a layperson, I was struck that I could not adequately explain Sigma-Aldrich’s role in the market.
If you take two extremes of retail shopping, there’s WalMart (broad selection, low prices, relatively few outlets) and there’s 7-11 (narrow selection, relatively high prices, lots of corner outlets). With 7-11, you presumably pay a little more for a little more convenience.
To the organic chemist, Aldrich is convenient (free shipping!), it’s typically high cost and the quality ranges for completely satisfactory to below average. The convenience and the high cost = 7-11; the extraordinarily broad selection of compounds, a little more WalMart-like. My experience with the customer service has been pretty good, actually.
So what is Aldrich? I think it’s more like a department store than anything (you can buy Aldrich brand glassware, not that I know a lot of people who do.) What do you all think? Do you have any favorite suppliers? (Seeing as how Acros is an advertiser, I have nothing but good to say about them.) What store do you equate with your favorite supplier?
If you can live with the fact that you will eventually get your starting material, maybe, someday, then Strem is pretty great (bottom line–they don’t sell you green tetrakis).*
* http://carbontet.blogspot.com/2007/10/tetrakis-talk.html
It is funny how the ads get targeted to the individual. The majority of the ads for me are Google’s Nexus One and get your PhD online.
I think Strem is awesome; if only all suppliers were like them (but faster!)
How in the he!! do you get free shipping from Aldrich?!?!? I usually find that they are not only more expensive on a chemical basis, they seem to have worked out a price gouging deal with FedEx/UPS on shipping prices…
Close in proximity and enough sales, I guess.
I actually spent a number of months looking for great suppliers related to crystallography. The short story is that I ended up bringing them together into one location. Currently, we have a small selection of chemicals that would apply to most chemists, but for what we do carry:
Sigma TCEP: 10g they charge 403, we charge 95.
http://store.p212121.com/products/TCEP-25-g.html
Sigma DTT: 5g 194.50, we charge 35.
Adrocs DTT: 50g 763.80, we are at 89.
http://store.p212121.com/products/DTT-100-g.html
I didn’t see these reducing agents being carried by Strem for a comparison. Anyway, I don’t want to spam an infomercial here, but my point is that many department stores aren’t charging 4-5x as competitors for essentially the same product.
My department also gets free shipping (usually gets here in 2 days) from S-A. Yay for midwest!
Sigma ends up being more convenient most of the time. More over, you can always try haggle a little especially if you buy frequently or have the volume. This become especially true when buying oligos or even peptides from them…
We use AKSci, their prices are ridiculously cheap (when compared to aldrich). Strem is great for some organometallic catalyts.