Our Blog
One Hot Summer for Package Lockers
Written by: Parcel Pending
3 Min Read
Published: August 22, 2017
Updated: July 19, 2023
Strong Demand Verifies Market Need, Leads to Record Sales
Farmers’ Almanac defines the “Dog Days of Summer” as the hottest days of the season; between July 3rd and August 11th of every year. Many people believe the phrase has to do with dogs being sluggish and lazy on hot summer days. But the saying is actually a reference to the sun occupying the same region as Serius, the brightest star visible from earth and part of the Canis Major (or “Greater Dog”) Constellation.
While this time can sometimes represent a slower sales period due to expected vacations and such, this period, on the contrary, continued a hot streak for Parcel Pending. As we announced a couple weeks ago, we achieved record sales in July, making the month the strongest in our company’s history. We attribute our record growth due to strong sales for our flagship indoor package lockers – which grew 72% over the previous year – as well as increasing demand for our new waterproof outdoor lockers and first-to-market refrigerated lockers.
In addition to growing interest in our expanding solution portfolio, we’re seeing demand for our package management solutions across our various market segments, including multifamily, commercial, universities and retail locations. Many of such clients are expanding their parcel locker implementations throughout their property portfolios and to new construction as well.
We believe our recent sales success is further evidence that our package management solutions are meeting a growing need in the marketplace; a proven, successful solution to the deluge of packages flowing into communities across the U.S. and, indeed, around the world. With the growing popularity of e-commerce, the parcel delivery market grew from $270 billion in 2015 to $300 billion last year and is expected to grow by 20% annually over the next few years, according to the Parcel Delivery Services, Global Market Intelligence Report 2016. The surge is being further fueled by the imminent explosion of online grocery shopping, which will not only add to the escalation but increase the urgency of getting packages to residents quickly as well.
Property managers know that such deliveries are manual-labor intensive, and distract their time away from managing their properties, serving residents and gathering new ones. Delivery errors and stolen packages only compound the problem for managers – and increase complaints by residents.
To battle this growing problem, property managers are turning to our electronic smart lockers, which accept deliveries, notify recipients, and allow easy self-service pickup around the clock. Parcel lockers are turning the negative of receiving too many incoming packages, into a positive of better serving – and even delighting – residents. We’re starting to see some data from recent resident surveys come in about their experience with parcel lockers – watch for this in the weeks ahead.
It’s pretty evident that the growth of online shopping will be keeping packages pouring into multi-family communities for years to come. And while these deliveries may have dogged property managers for years previously, our recent success is proving that parcel lockers are quickly emerging as the reliable solution to the package delivery challenge.