All the Fun of the Fair with Pack & Send

Reading, England, February 2010 – PACK & SEND; the packing and shipping company that launched in the UK at the start of last year, make a simple promise: ‘We send anything, anywhere!’, but this was tested recently with the request to transport a 1.5 metre Meccano model ferris wheel from France to Australia for a collector.

With recent UK interest in ‘classic’ toys helped by TV shows like James May’s Toy Stories, the PACK & SEND team in the UK were excited to be asked to arrange collection and secure shipping of a scale model of a fairground ferris wheel made from the Daddy of classic toys – Meccano. With the model having been bought online by a collector, the task not only required safe transportation to Australia, but it also had to be collected from the seller near Dijon in France – a 1200 mile round trip from the UK base through some of the worst weather in Europe in the past 25 years!

In many ways, this project was similar to ‘collect, pack and ship’ jobs that PACK & SEND have done for numerous ‘ebayers’ in the UK and beyond. Ebay sellers of large, fragile, awkward or valuable items struggle to offer suitable delivery options and often limit their listings to only buyers who will collect because of this; but this restricts who can bid and so reduces their potential sale price. Sellers who use PACK & SEND’s packing and delivery services, however, can often secure better prices by inviting bids from anywhere in the knowledge that they have a reliable shipping solution to offer, regardless of where the items need to go.

In this case, however, it was the buyer who contacted PACK & SEND and the size and fragility of the model, which has 14 illuminated cars around the 4 metre circumference, meant that it required a dedicated vehicle to safely collect it and then take it to the PACK & SEND depot for full preparation and packing.  

‘We didn’t know how we were going to move the model when we first bid for it’, explained John Markworth, Organiser of the Ballarat Antique Fair in Victoria, Australia. ‘We spoke to our local PACK & SEND store and they explained that there were now outlets in the UK and several other countries. Once we had the contact details for the UK HQ, they took care of everything for us, including contacting the seller directly. It was all so easy!’

Meccano has been a construction toy favourite with children of all ages for over a century and, although the Company and the products have changed over the years, its popularity endures with regular Meccano exhibitions throughout the world. When PACK & SEND discovered that, although invented in the UK, global production had been exclusively from the factory in Calais since 1959, they took a short detour on the road journey to the UK to visit Meccano Calais and let the experts enjoy the model before it left the country.

The 1.5m ferris wheel is believed to have been built in the 1950s and is to feature in Antique Fairs across Australia later this year. This meant that there was sufficient time to use PACK & SEND sea freight services which reduced the overall shipping cost. On arrival in the UK, therefore, it was shrouded in a damp resistant wrapping and then secured into a custom built sea-safe crate before starting the twelve thousand mile leg of its journey to Victoria. It is expected to complete the final land leg of the trip to Ballarat in early April.

Pack & Send are able to help businesses and consumers across the UK and beyond with more conventional requirements too. Their range of domestic and international courier services and collection and custom packing solutions are ideal for safely transporting anything from spare parts to works of art. 

Pack & Send are planning to open up to 240 stores across the UK many of which will be owner operated through a franchise license. Individuals interested in owning and operating a Pack & Send store can find more information about uk franchise opportunities here and anyone needing to ship items (however unusual) in the UK or to anywhere else in the world can request a quote online or call 0845 465 0 564.  

ENDS

For further information, please contact Graeme Rhodes at Pack & Send:

Tel:  0118 9584628 
Email: [email protected]