For Guy Plouffe and his wife Darla, starting BunkTrunk, a locking box for college dorm rooms, was more than filling a niche for students across the United States, it was a solution for a father to provide his daughter with a safe place to store her laptop and belongings when she wasn’t in her shared dorm room.
A Storage Locking System That Fits Into Any Space
“There is typically no extra room in a dorm room when you have two or three students in a room. It’s pretty tight,” says Plouffe, “I came up with the idea of a locking box that essentially uses that free space above the [foot of the] bed.”
With no direct competition, BunkTrunk has become a popular purchase for college students across the United States. What’s unique about the product is its automatic locking system, combination locking system, and interchangeability from a storage box to a desk or nightstand. It installs within a few minutes without any hardware and comes in three options, The Bachelors, The Masters, and The Ph.D. The BunkTrunk takes no floor or desk space either, making it the perfect option for even the smallest dorm rooms.
“You can put your laptop or phone in there while it’s charging but when it opens it’s a desk so students can do their homework in their own private space,” says Plouffe.
Plouffe used UPS to ship the locking boxes and soon realized he had to automate the process in order to run his business more efficiently. Plouffe found PluginHive while researching automation solutions for the WooCommerce UPS labels. He chose to reach out to them when he saw how reasonable the prices were and the many great reviews available online. After incorporating the automated shipping label system into their website, there was no reason to reach out to support. It wasn’t until Plouffe realized that they might be able to streamline the delivery process further that they asked for help.
PluginHive’s Custom Add-on Provides an Automated Solution
Ensuring the BunkTrunk arrived on time for college students’ move-in day was a struggle. Hundreds of students would order the 20 kg storage system in April or May and expect it to arrive at their college dorm on the day they did in August – otherwise many were returned.
Plouffe’s team realized quickly that they were spending too much time with the calendar trying to calculate when a shipment would need to be shipped in order to arrive within a three-day window. “That’s when we approached [PluginHive] to see if [they] could create a plugin that would tell us when we would need to get a package to UPS to get it [to the customer] by the desired delivery date.”
The customer chooses the order date and we generate the UPS label and the delivery date sheet. PluginHive took all of the guesswork out of it. Now we have a book with a calendar where we file the sheets. So, on the weekend, we pull all of the sheets for the next week and they’re all ordered based on the date we need to get the product to UPS using the plugin.
Guy Plouffe
PluginHive’s Estimated Delivery Date for the UPS add-on is a huge convenience for Bunktrunk, says Plouffe, who says the plugin removed about half of their previous returns. “If you’re moving into a dorm on August 15th, your mother and father will probably fly out with you and they’re there for about three days which is inevitably a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,” says Plouffe. “When your dorm room is being set up on Friday and Saturday, once [your parents leave], you’re done. And if our product is not there it will typically get returned. Once the dorm room is set up and the student is set that door closes and unless there’s a problem it doesn’t open again.”
Where much of their deliveries were done with calendars and guesswork, now BunkTrunk has a system that works for them. “Picture 60 or 70 of these units in each row aligned by its shipping to UPS date. You’ll have a month’s worth of product and have to go row by row. It’s so much more efficient.”
When I had this need for the shipping plugin I had some interaction with one of your employees. She has been awesome. Every time I had to engage for something she was very professional, very responsive. I’m getting responses right away. It’s very appreciated. I would 100% recommend PluginHive. No question.
Guy Plouffe
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