ShockWatch Gains A New Market
Robert Menard
Certified Purchasing Professional,
Certified Professional Purchasing Consultant, Certified Green Purchasing Professional, Certified Professional Purchasing Manager
A recent Dallas Morning News story by consumer/retail staff writer Maria Halkias grabbed my attention because it featured a company known to me for at least 25 years. The topic paragraph wrote of safer shipments of boxes holding electronics and other breakables.
The featured company was Shockwatch, a Dallas-based firm with a manufacturing facility in the small town of Graham, TX. ShockWatch has been producing products to detect impacts, tilt, and temperature violations of the shipper’s specifications. For instance, if your fragile package is equipped with ShockWatch detectors (on the inner or outer container) and it suffers impact, the detector will record the impact and alert the receiver to inspect and perhaps reject the delivery. Watch this video for a demonstration. Other products include TiltWatch and Temperature Watch.
When I did public seminars in the 1990 for supply chain personnel around the U.S., we would speak of ShockWatch products when we covered delivery and inspection issues. There was always many, often most in the group who had never heard of these products. It was with the same surprise that I read the newspaper story. It referred to viral videos of dropped Christmas packages.
What is the new market?
According to the story, “ one in every 10 packages in the U.S, is damaged when it reaches its destination.” Speaking of Christmas packages, the story goes on to note that “Several hundred million packages are shipped between Black Friday and Christmas Eve.” Even in only a quarter of 400 million packages are affected, at the one in 10 ratios, that means 40 million packages could suffer damage and much damage goes undetected, often until it is too late to make a claim. Effectively, Shockwatch is spreading from the Business to Business (B2) to the Business to Consumer (B2C) market.
The B2C online market is growing and all products bought on line are shipped. Deloitte is calling for an 8.5 to 9 percent increase in online sales. This 40 year old company has sales of about $21 Million. Increased shipping demand from online purchases could be a boost to revenue.