When I moved to New York a little over a decade ago, of course I brought my self-built desktop with me. But when it came time to upgrade within the next year or so, I was stymied. I was still finding my way around a city much bigger than any I’d ever lived in, so I didn’t have a clue how to find a store for buying the hardware I needed, let alone how to find a good store or one that would give me a good deal. I asked my acquaintance John, who was just as into system building as I was, for advice. His response was one intriguing, but unfamiliar word: Newegg. At that point, I’d never heard of that particular website — this was late 2001 or early 2002, and it had just opened — but I was willing to try it.

Fast forward to today. The last time I bought components anywhere except from Newegg, barring a smoke-billowing-from-the-motherboard emergency, was… er… well, let me get back to you on that. Its broad selection and powerful search system have so spoiled me, I can barely look at other hardware-centric e-tailer sites without getting a headache. Given the fact that “Newegg.com” is usually on the tip of any respectable builder’s tongue, and that the company has enjoyed such success that it’s now the second-largest online-only retailer in the United States (it trails only Amazon.com).

So I was more than a little excited when I was presented with the opportunity to tour Newegg’s east coast order distribution center earlier this week. I couldn’t wait to discover how the company moves so many products so quickly and whether the work environment was as cool as I imagined it to be. In previous lives I had a little bit of experience with shipping, but seeing how a major tech company like this does it sounded like it would be very instructive for gaining a greater understanding of where the industry is and why it works the way it does. The only catch: I couldn’t do this from within the cozy confines of Manhattan.

Located only about 40 minutes outside the city (depending on traffic) in Edison, New Jersey, the complex is one of only three the company operates in the US. It services the entire Northeast, from New England down to about Virginia or so; that’s when the Memphis center kicks in, and for orders placed from locations west of the Mississippi, the outfit in City of Industry, California, also where Newegg’s home office is located, will take care of business. (All three US centers do ship to Canada, but there’s one located in Mississauga, Ontario, as well.)

There’s certainly plenty of business for Newegg to take care of. The 350,000-square-foot Edison warehouse not only houses some 15,000 SKUs of products, it also ships as many as 15,000 packages a day — and, I was assured by Warehouse Manager Kevin Lee, if you place your order by 3:30 PM, it goes out the same day. Making this an even more impressive feat is that all 120 or so of the warehouse’s workers operate the same shift, roughly 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM. This changes slightly during the holiday season, however, when 80 workers are added and shifts are staggered a bit more; but, as Lee explained, given the greatly increased volume (the Edison warehouse alone shipped 80,000 packages on Black Friday 2010 and the two days following it), this is something of a necessity.