My name’s Jay Wiggins and I look after LOVEFiLM’s UK distribution centre in Peterborough. It’s our job to make sure that you get the films, games and TV series that you want, as quickly as possible.
With more than a million customers to look after, this is no small feat, and it’s a busy time: you’re watching more DVDs and playing more games than at any other time of the year.
One a busy morning, we get more than 250,000 DVDs and games from you in the post; by the end of the day, we’ll have sent out another 250,000. That’s a lot of discs. A LOT!
If you stacked those DVDs and games in their envelopes on top of each other, the pile would be 500 meters high. That’s about 10 Nelson’s columns. Or twice the height of Canary Wharf.
If you weighed them, you’d need scales that go up to 10 tonnes. That’s the same as two African elephants or eight VW Golfs. Or, for rugby fans, about the same weight as ALL the players in ALL the teams in the Six Nations tournament put together.
To get all these discs in and out, every day, we rely on some very smart technology and, of course, our excellent team of around 200 people. They make a really good job of it, but we’re always looking for ways to do things better and faster.
And I’ll tell you about some of the new ideas we’re exploring in my next post..
Feeling a bit dissapointed with Love film at the moment.. I have tried to rent Despicable me and it does not appear to be available the same thing happened with The invention of lying I had to go to Blockbusters in the end, kind of defeats the object in being a member.
Kelly, we are as disappointed as you are that we are still unable to provide titles from Universal. It is something that we continue to talk to them about, but as yet, we have no date that these titles may be available.
Thanks – I like the behind the scenes peek at the distribution centre. perhaps it’s just me, but I just love finding out how stuff works, and the logistics behind Lovefilm is pretty interesting indeed.
Do you by any chance hold open days, where visitors/customers get a chance to visit the distribution centre, and see the whole process in action? May be a good idea – I’d certainly be interested.
In the meantime I look forward to that next post.