No, it’s not an actual bird. The Lark is a sleeping aid device meant for couples that launched last year at Disrupt and made some more announcements just last month, and reader Graham decided to pick one up after hearing about it. And while normally a package might go from a warehouse to a regional center, and then onward to its destination, this particular one has traveled more than 30,000 miles and crossed the Pacific no less than three times on its tortuous way to Del Mar, California.
After leaving Shenzhen (naturally) it has stopped by Hong Kong, Taiwan, Alaska, Kentucky, California (briefly), Australia, Hong Kong again, and then back to California, and should arrive in the next few days.
Many gadgets undergo this global gauntlet, but it’s interesting to see it tracked like this. Many OEM devices are shipped to US-based companies for final packing and distribution, but this one has the circumference of the earth under its belt and then some, all on a UPS Saver delivery service. Talk about a global economy — it’s very impressive, but I shudder to think at the amount of fuel involved in this. A necessary consequence of putting manufacturing and demand on two sides of an ocean, I guess.
If you want a Lark, you should probably just drop by the Apple Store. More direct. Seems pretty SkyMall-ish to me, but I’m not really the target market. 