Leading Event Management Company Becomes Leading Shipper

December 4, 2020

Race Day Events able to pivot to continue to bring events to the masses

With 2020 being a year we all want to put behind us, there are instances within the endurance sports industry where companies have taken on tasks that go beyond their normal scope in order to support other businesses and be able to stay afloat themselves. Race Day Events is one such company.

While “stuffing” may make you think of a tasty holiday dinner, this fall at Race Day Events has been full of another kind of stuffing: fulfillment. With the huge increase in virtual racing and events, there has been a large demand for mailings of packets containing bibs, medals, shirts, and other participant swag. Companies with small staffs and little to no warehouse space would have struggled to to keep up with these demands in a timely manner while shipping these race materials.  This is where Race Day Events was able to switch gears and use their assets to benefit their partners as well increase their own labor in a time when things were not functioning quite normally. “Basically, we turned our warehouse into a fulfillment center,” said Ryan Richards, Vice President. “Our clients and friends ship their shirts, medals and merchandise to us. Because we aren’t doing events on the scale we normally would, we have the warehouse and staff availability to inventory, store and ship out these items for these other race companies.”

Fulfillment goes further than just stuffing mailer envelopes to be sent out to athletes. Coordination and organization of shipments from overseas, unloading containers, scheduling full and part time workers as well as merging data for up to date inventory, all while completing this in a socially distanced way is certainly a big project. When virtual events can contain up to 70,000 participant packets, this becomes a large-scale undertaking. Amanda Marek who is the Director of Timing Operations for Race Day Events, added Fulfillment Director to her resume. “While we normally wouldn’t ship 5000 packets in a normal year, we are shipping several thousand each day. Managing all of this data and these moving parts is similar to being at an event”, Marek said.

While fulfillment started as a way to help customers and keep employees, Race Day Events is now looking at this as a long-term business opportunity. There is a demand for virtual events and while that demand is there, Race Day Events plans to continue their fulfillment business. With the hope that live events come back in 2021, Race Day Events is investigating additional warehouse space as well as equipment to increase the efficiency which can only be better for their clients that need fulfillment services.