The workers snatch goods off thousands of shelves and deliver them to an army of packers, who box the orders and drop them on conveyor belts. Every item has a special code to speed up the packing. A 27-inch television takes an X1, indicating the item is heavy and must be shipped by itself. Lighter-weight valuable items, like VCRs, take a 200 code. That means it requires an additional layer of wrapping paper to help disguise it on a customer's doorstep.
Red lasers scan each package as it zips by on the conveyor belt.
Vernon Nies, who runs the warehouse for Fingerhut Cos., boasts that his crew can process as many as 30,000 items an hour. Retailers have all had to rethink their packing and delivery strategies for the coming holiday season. Delivery companies from FDX Corp.'s Federal Express to United Parcel Service of America Inc. to Hanover Direct Inc. are vying for that business, but Fingerhut's expertise has helped it score some of the biggest coups. As a catalog company, Fingerhut had a head start on many of its competitors in figuring out how to get customer orders to their doorstep. Tenn. With less business than expected from TV sales, much of that capacity remained unused, until e-commerce hit the scene and Fingerhut began offering its services to Web retailers.