Elf Storage and Distribution

Edmund, had been promoted to Chief Executive of Elf, Inc. in February, a mere 10 months ago. It had at the time been a great honor, but had almost instantly become a farce. Not only did toy production stop for a number of months, it was now looking like all the toys would remain in storage until such time, Father Christmas would be allowed to deliver them. And who knew when that might be.

The phone rang. Edmund picked up and stoically spoke, “Hallo.”

“Edmund, I’ve had an idea.”

It was a crazy plan. The elves were to stop all toy production immediately. That was unheard of. Every available toy-making elf had to re-train overnight in software development and related disciplines. That, at least, was possible, elves are extremely adaptable and pick up new information like sponges, and there was a small, but efficient development team that had been building the software for the many electronic toys over the years.

The plan was to build a digital parcel, a package of goodies, for every child who had the means to consume it. Where appropriate it would include video games, e-books, movies, tv boxsets, music, comics, digital trading cards, software, and various digital assets like avatar upgrades and gift cards.

Edmund was horrified at the sheer amount of work involved, this late in the day. He spent hours on a spreadsheet trying to figure out how to achieve this massive undertaking. No matter how often he did the sums, there was no way to build all the packages and the delivery method. They would have to use a third-party to distribute.

He searched for “package distribution” and a few suitable options showed up. After a quick read of each of the offerings feature sets, one stood out, one with enough global infrastructure and scalability to handle such a large distribution all at once.

“This just might work,” he muttered to himself.

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