Terhune Orchards is a beautiful farm stand and “pick your own” farm located just outside of Princeton New Jersey. My wife Suzannah and I try to make the pilgrimage there every year, depending on our schedule. Sometimes it is still a bit warm, sometimes the leaves are beginning to turn, and sometimes we luck out and arrive on one of their “festival” days. The festival days always seem to include a bluegrass band complete with banjo, a full petting zoo, and hay rides. Whether we make the festival or not, we always enjoy their cider doughnuts. For me, that trip to the Orchard always reminds me that fall has arrived. I think of this time of year, from now until January 1 as the “season of holidays”. There seems to be one holiday after another every month during this time. People need holidays. The fact that there are so few holidays over the summer is only because the summer itself is one long 90 day holiday to many of us (children in particular).
What does any of this have to do with packages and package tracking software? Quite a lot actually! We use holidays to mark time in much the same way a mile marker records distance on a highway. We use these holidays to fix in our minds all of the details that are happening at that moment in time. This is why it should come as no surprise that the volume of packages received around any holiday spikes considerably. Without a package logging system, many schools would be crushed by a mountain of packages, not knowing how to get them to their rightful recipients.
Since we have so many Universities and student housing locations as clients, we always expect a large jump in student inbound packages during the month of September. Naturally, this is something we see coming a mile off. Surprisingly though, even our EZTrackIt clients in the student housing industry can sometimes have a difficult time seeing the forest through the trees. Yes, everyone knows about the September “move in” package increase. But it is the holidays, (and I don’t mean just the ones in December) that represent multiple spikes in package volume. Halloween has slowly grown to represent a significant increase in the number of packages received at student housing facilities. When we first noticed this spike last year we thought it may be an anomaly, but as we researched further we saw that this happens every year, and around almost every holiday. Thus, it becomes even more critical for schools to have package tracking software around any “holiday” time.
Why do we see a 20% increase in the number of packages received in the 3 days prior to Halloween every year? Probably for the same reason we see a 50% spike in the number of packages received in the 2 days before Valentine’s Day. This is all about human nature. In the case of student housing, it is parents marking that moment in time with their children, particularly so at Halloween. EZTrackIt services clients and a lot of industries beside student housing. We help everyone from residential buildings, hospitals and healthcare, hotels and hospitality, and even corporate mailrooms with their inbound package logging system needs. What do they all have in common? Every single one of these industries experiences that same spike in packages on Valentine’s Day. Thus proving that we are all human and it is the little things that matter most to us.
At EZTrackIt we’re big fans of the little things. That’s why we spent so much time and effort making our package logging software easy to use. On this same note, it is supremely important to us to make sure that your package recipients get notified the instant they get a package in whatever way they wish to be notified. You should check us out and see how we are different from our competitors. Halloween is just around the corner and you might want to get a package logging system in place before your package volume increases. By the way, if you are ever in Princeton New Jersey, tell Terhune Orchards that Patrick sent you!
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