Jennifer Burch is a self-professed bargain hunter who just celebrated her 10-year anniversary with PackageIt. As purchasing supervisor and chief deal finder, she spends her days uncovering great packaging and warehouse supply values for Seattle and Pacific Northwest customers. “I’m a problem-solver by nature, and I like spreadsheets and numbers. Probably too much, actually!” Jennifer jokes. “I love my job, and I love helping customers. It’s a perfect match for me.”
“My role is to find the right packaging and shipping products at the best possible prices,” she says. During her search, Jennifer wades through inventory data and analyzes spreadsheets to track down the ideal carton, bag or cushioning solution. To fulfill client wish lists, she contacts vendors and compares cost and turnaround times for supplies that deliver product protection, cost containment and marketing punch. This type of dedicated, tailored service is just one of reasons PackageIt is a top
Seattle packaging contender.
“Many of our clients have been with us for decades,” says Jennifer, “They appreciate our personal touch. Each customer has an assigned sales rep and customer service manager, and the companies know we’ll do our very best to meet their packaging needs.”
Part of the PackageIt Family
Detecting Deals & Building Partnerships
Jennifer’s masterful problem-solving skills come in especially handy when it’s time to develop
custom packaging strategies for products with unusual shapes, sizes and storage requirements. “We provide packaging or shipping solutions for virtually anything: helicopter parts, Roomba vacuum cleaners, bagels. I’ve had to find cartons and protective supplies to keep chocolates from melting and assure proper storage for blood plasma. Every day is different. I never know what’s coming next, and I love a good challenge.”
To deliver best-possible value to Seattle clients weathering a tough pandemic economy, Jennifer does a lot of digging. She is PackageIt’s chief “detective” of sorts, working to identify deals, stay current with innovation and strategize each purchase based on her findings.
“Jennifer is a critical operations team member. Her role as purchasing supervisor is a tough one. Her ability to maintain the operational mindset of ‘cost’ while satisfying the urgent needs of our customers and sales staff is like walking a tightrope on a daily basis,” says Operations Manager Bill Gunning. “She is quite successful at keeping all parties satisfied, and her work ethic and business loyalty are top-notch. Jennifer is a significant player within our operation, and we’re lucky to have someone with her dedication in this role.”
Another crucial part of Jennifer’s job is developing and nurturing win-win partnerships with leading Pacific Northwest packaging suppliers. “We work with vendors both big and small, and it really gives us the flexibility to find the right fit for our customers—whether they need 10,000 boxes for a retail product or they’re running an Etsy business out of their living room.”
According to Jennifer, it’s this agile, customer-centered approach that distinguishes the company from competitors. “We’re like the ‘scrappy little distributor that could.’ We get a lot of panicked calls at o-dark-thirty saying, ‘I know, on paper, it says this can’t happen. But can you make this happen?’ And a lot of times we can—whether it’s moving up a delivery date or helping clients solve a shipping problem that wasn’t our fault. Whenever we can swing it, we bend as far as we can to help people out.”
Off the Clock With Jennifer
When Jennifer has free time, she spends most of it reading fantasy and sci-fi books, historical novels and biographies. “I read about 150 books in a typical year, and I read 200 in 2020,” she says. With a personal library of almost 1,000 hard-copy books and even more titles on her Nook and Kindle, Jennifer is unlikely to run out of reading material. Before COVID-19, she also listened to audiobooks while riding public transit to PackageIt’s Seattle headquarters. Now, working remotely due to the pandemic, she listens to Audible during work breaks or long walks along the Sammamish River Trail.
“Basically, if there was a way to consume books intravenously, I would probably do that, too,” she laughs. “My favorite book is the Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read it at least once a year, and I’ve had to repurchase the book multiple times because it falls apart from so much use.”
Jennifer also speaks fondly of her big family, having grown up in a busy home with eight brothers and sisters. “I was adopted by my stepmother. When she married my dad, she had four kids and he had five. It was like a Brady Bunch get-together all the time,” she recalls. “I’m the oldest of nine children, and I’m close to my siblings even though we’re not close geographically. We are scattered all over the globe.” With brothers and sisters residing in Portland, Utah, Idaho, Texas and Vienna (and 15 nieces and nephews to keep up with), Jennifer relies on Facebook to stay connected. “You can imagine, with that many family members spread out all over, it’s kind of tough to schedule a conference call!”
Contact a Seattle Custom Packaging Specialist
Thanks to the skill, patience and adaptability of team members like Jennifer Burch, PackageIt successfully navigated the adversity faced by U.S. businesses in 2020. Backed by our experienced staff and nearly five decades of experience, we’re taking a spirit of optimism into 2021.
Join our family—and experience the PackageIt difference today!
Connect online to inquire about your product’s shipping and branding requirements or call 888.743.0907 to reach a PackageIt sales representative. To learn more about members of our Pacific Northwest packaging and shipping materials team, check out the
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