The Factory Depot has a wide selection of office supplies, furniture, electronics and several lines of products not offered on any other site reviewed. The Factory Depot, geared more toward individuals than businesses, carries bed/bath products, cell phones, personal sports equipment, video game console accessories and musical equipment.
The Factory Depot carries all the basic office supplies like paper, ink, office machines and presentation supplies. The furniture selection includes all the basics (chairs, footrests, bookcases, file cabinets, etc.) except desks. The selection of electronics includes computer peripherals and accessories, but not computers themselves.
Although there are surprising sections of products like “jewelry and watches,” some of these product categories are misleading. For example, the “jewelry and watches” section contains four products that are unrelated to jewelry or watches and also unrelated to each other. The same goes for the “music” category, which includes an ink cartridge and a router but nothing to do with music. At first glance, this site appears to offer a much wider range of products than it actually does.
This site does not offer any services.
The Factory Depot website uses a similar form of categorization to what appears on most office supply sites. The left side of the page contains product categories. When you click on a category, products appear on the main part of the page, and a new set of subcategories expands into the left navigation. While it is useful to be able to view all the products in a main category without selecting a sub-category, this website has confusing and sometimes irrelevant categorization of products.
Once you’ve selected a range of products, a dropdown menu above the product listings allows the shopper to sort items by name. There is the option to view products within that category that fit into various price ranges down the left side of the page. However, when the product results are irrelevant, being able to sort by price is not useful. Product descriptions are very thorough and product suggestions (i.e. “you may also be interested in these products”) are relevant.
The Factory Depot uses Amazon for its purchasing engine. If you already have an Amazon account, you can use it to make secure purchases from this website. The customer reviews of products are more prevalent on this site than any other site surveyed, perhaps because the site uses Amazon’s “rate your transaction” function to encourage more shoppers to provide feedback about their purchases.
The Factory Depot offers bulk discounts for large purchases. Wholesale accounts can also be obtained (allowing for payment terms and phone/fax orders), but the site does not offer special pricing for businesses. Again, it appears that this site is more geared toward the individual shopper than toward business customers.
The Factory Depot has a wide range of products, although some of the surprising categories turn out to be misleading and only populated with unrelated items. Finding products on the website is fairly easy and the product reviews are very helpful. The fact that The Factory Depot uses Amazon for its purchasing engine is a plus, allowing customers to use an existing Amazon account for secure purchases.
