With December almost upon us, think about how busy Santa Claus will be on the night of Christmas Eve and in the early hours of Christmas Day.

Each year faces a logistical conundrum: how to deliver all the gifts to all the children around the world who celebrate Christmas.

A study from a few years ago gives some figures on how hectic her night is. University of Leicester researchers he calculated that there are approximately 715 million Christian boys and girls around the world.

They then assumed an average of three children per household, which means Santa has to deliver to 238 million homes. This, in turn, requires Rudolf and the other reindeer to pull Santa’s sleigh at half the speed of light. That’s 336 billion mph (540 billion km / ph).

While Santa is no doubt continuing his final preparations and getting ready, Christmas is, of course, also the busiest time of the year for retailers – none of us can sadly rely solely on gifts that are magically delivered through ours. fireplaces.

And with online orders now accounts for more than a third of all Christmas season sales, retailers need to focus intensively on their delivery systems.

The giant of the sector is Amazon, which in the past year delivered 4.2 billion packages in the United States alone.

This was more than double its total of 1.9 billion in 2019, as the coronavirus fueled a large wave of online orders. So much so that Amazon delivered one in five packages to the United States last year.

It’s a similar picture in the UK, where Amazon’s sales also doubled in 2020.

The convenience of Amazon is such that many of us now automatically expect things like next day delivery and the ability to track orders.

For other retailers, large and small, this poses a problem: How can they make their delivery systems as efficient and easy to use as possible?

One option is to become a third-party seller on Amazon, but that comes with a number of fees which can reportedly equal 45% of the price of some items.

Alternatively, retailers can remain independent of Amazon and instead use the services of a number of tech companies that can help them better deliver their products to customers.

One such business is the British company Diamond Logistics, managed by founder Kate Lester.

Through its digital platform Despatch Lab, it allows retailers to book, track and manage deliveries using the company’s fleet of vans, but also through Royal Mail and delivery companies such as DPD and Hermes. Resellers can also arrange to stock their products at Diamond Logistics’ warehouses, from where they are then shipped directly.

Ms. Lester says her revenues have increased by 50% this year as more and more stores increase their online presence.

“We have 30 local logistics centers,” he says. “So we can store it, pick it up, pack it and ship it.

“Retailers have a pretty tough choice: actually either you put your stuff in Amazon and it becomes a cost comparison thing. That’s really what Amazon is about … or you keep control of your logistics and outsource it to someone. [like us]. “

An alternative for dealers is to use their own fleet of delivery vans. To enable companies to monitor their delivery drivers and plan routes, the US company HyperTrack offers a GPS-based tracking app and system.

The company’s vice president of sales, Francois Martel, says the system allows both retailers and wholesalers to provide customers with more accurate delivery times.

“Imagine you are a reseller and order from a wholesaler,” he says. “Wholesalers don’t have the same similar technology as Amazon, yet they want it to provide a reliable delivery window that’s not 8-4.

“Windows can be so big at the moment they’re ridiculous, so using us to provide narrower windows and sticking to that time is changing the experience significantly.”

For the Norwegian company Gelato (although the name has nothing to do with ice cream), its big idea is to help companies distance themselves from deliveries.

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Its software allows e-commerce sellers of physical products like apparel, posters, and books to connect with manufacturers around the world.

For example, if a British patterned t-shirt designer receives an order from Australia, instead of shipping the item from the UK, they can get the item printed and delivered by an Australian company.

Henrik Müller-Hansen, founder and CEO of Gelato, says there aren’t just huge environmental benefits. “What local manufacturing and on-demand manufacturing allow you to do is reduce distribution distances, but also bring supply and demand together,” he says.

“You don’t have to guess anymore. In the old days, to achieve economies of scale, you sat there like a big global manufacturing company and tried to gauge demand. Now, with local production on demand, you produce when you get your order.”

Mr. Müller-Hansen expects his business to grow in parallel with developments in 3D printing, which will allow more products to be easily manufactured remotely.

However, perhaps the most exciting development in delivery technology – and particularly for Santa Claus – are cargo transport drones. (Tens of millions of them would have really helped him on Christmas Eve.)

However, although the technology already exists, it is still awaiting regulatory approval by governments to begin domestic commercial use.

Instead, there are currently a number of pilot projects around the world. Of course Amazon has its own project – Prime Air – but some smaller companies have also developed their own drones.

One such company is the Israeli company Flytrex, which is already allowing restaurants in the city of Holy Springs, North Carolina, to deliver food via its drones. It is part of a trial authorized by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

In the future, drones could mean you can order all your Christmas gifts on December 24 and have them delivered that afternoon.

But in the meantime, Kate Lester says it’s best to order the gifts in advance. “Receive your orders soon, because it will be fatal to leave it until December 21 to do it this year. Because I think this December will be chaos [busy]. ”

Unless, of course, you let Santa do it.

Additional reports from the New Tech Economy series publisher Will Smale.