Vacated dorms create business opportunity
Over the summer, Magalotti launched ShipMyRoom, a new moving service aimed at students.
When COVID-19 brought business to a crawl for Berks Countybased Legacy Logistics, president and owner Ernie Magalotti decided to go back to school.
The fact that college campuses across the country were closing wasn’t a deterrent, but rather the purpose of his visits.
Over the summer, Magalotti launched ShipMyRoom, a new moving service aimed at students.
Initially, the idea was to put Legacy Logistics of Muhlenberg Township and its existing infrastructure to work collecting personal belongings from dormitories and student housing that had been abandoned at the height of the pandemic, then either ship the items home or hold them in storage.
What started as a plan to clean out rooms students couldn’t easily return to for one reason or another quickly showed promise as a full-fledged venture of its own.
“We’re building ShipMyRoom as a long-term business,” said Magalotti. “Underclassmen might want to store their items until they return to campus the following school year. Some want their stuff shipped back to their home and we can do that too.
“There’s sustainability to ShipMyRoom beyond the pandemic, and we’re committed to it.”
Already, ShipMyRoom has helped students move from schools up and down the east coast, from local institutions Albright College and Alvernia University to nationally recognized schools such as Penn State University and the University of North Carolina.
How ShipMyRoom works
ShipMyRoom offers different levels of service tailored to the amount of work students — and perhaps their parents — are willing to take on.
Pack your own boxes and have them waiting at the front door to save some money. Or leave it to ShipMyRoom to not only escort your belongings to their destination, but take care of packing as well supervising via video chat.
“We’ve done both,” said Magalotti. “Depends on the liability. Some colleges didn’t want us in the dorms, so the student would pack. We provide boxing, they bring it down, we pick it up curbside.
“When we do go in, our staff video calls the student, they go through the items together, identify what’s yours and create an inventory list of the items we actually packed. It’s more of a full service.”
With the coronavirus bringing about a swift end to on-campus learning at numerous institutions, it isn’t always a matter of preference.
Some of ShipMyRoom’s very first customers had little or no say after students were barred from returning to campus in March. Many who departed for spring break expecting to be back wound up finishing the school year or even their academic careers by way of online classes.
“We had some rooms that were complete disasters, and some that were really easy,” said Magalotti. “When they know we’re coming, things are usually in better shape.”
Fortunately, disorganization isn’t part of the pricing structure.
Each of ShipMyRoom’s level of services — starting at $135 — covers three boxes and/or large items at the base price, with a cost of $30 for every additional box or item. The most expensive level also covers up to four months of storage.
And, yes, ShipMyRoom can also help with moving to college too, whenever that might be deemed safe.
“You can go to shipmyroom. com and it basically has different options, kind of like a shopping cart,” said Magalotti. “You pick what you want and book it right there.”
Why Legacy pivoted
In June, Magalotti achieved a significant milestone, as Legacy Logistics marked its 20th year in business.
COVID undoubtedly put a bit of a damper on the celebration though.
Legacy provides trade show solutions such as planning, shipping and storage. Yet, with large gatherings of any kind shut down and corporate travel suspended for most of the U.S., business was at a standstill.
That’s when Renee Langdon, marketing manager for Legacy Logistics, came up with the idea for ShipMyRoom and also designed its website.
“Renee was talking to someone who identified college students that were on spring break had never returned to campus and these colleges had problems with personal items in rooms,” said Magalotti.
Everything Legacy needed to intervene was already in place — labor spread across the country, the means to ship bulk items and storage space in the form of two warehouses totaling 40,000 square feet.
“It’s definitely a different model for us,” said Magalotti. “Everything we did was business to business. This is business to consumer.”
Legacy is getting inventive with its trade show offerings too, experimenting with a traveling “road show” of sorts that takes a single convention booth from city to city to demonstrate new equipment in smaller, more localized groups.
But the reality is the industry is biding its time until the virus finally subsides in the U.S. Some trade show experts are targeting the second quarter of 2021 for such events to return, notes Magalotti.
In the meantime, Legacy Logistics will continue putting its people and resources to work for ShipMyRoom.
“We have a nationwide labor pool,” said Magalotti. “That labor force is available to us to do other things, especially having to pivot because events were canceled.”