As someone who truly enjoys writing, I take immense pride in identifying the perfect balance and weight of words to describe any given situation and yet; “It’s fair to say that 2020 has been a relentlessly challenging and unforgivingly horrid year” seems to be a woefully inadequate description of the last 12 months.
No matter because the purpose of this blog is to look forward and I do so with genuine belief and optimism, “2021 will be everything that this year simply wasn’t.” Whilst the effects of this year will impact us for many more months and the memories of 2020 will remain with us for a lifetime, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
In 2021, we will launch new products and services which will help you to capture memories in print like never before and we will expand our business printing services too. I can’t wait to get started.
Please Keep Reading…
A Year In Business
Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge, that whilst Covid may not have affected everyone equally it has affected everyone. For the first time in my lifetime, we have been shown that we are all equal. This virus doesn’t care about our race, our financial standing, our beliefs or our life choices. We are one and we are vulnerable and that’s okay because together we are stronger, as proven by the combined vaccine effort and our collective support of one another.
We have been trading since October 31st 2015 and as I mentioned in a previous blog entry, we moved into our business premises on June 11th 2019. In November & December of 2019, we had our highest grossing months ever, and by some considerable distance. I somewhat naively thought “we’ve cracked this”, we’ve proven that our business can handle higher demand, increasing overheads and still grow to support our family. Now whilst I’m not wrong because we’re still here, “scrapping away”, no one could have foreseen what was to come.
A Year To Remember And Forget
It’s January 2020 and buoyed by the previous months’ of trading, I am excited to get back to work. I walk into our premises full of enthuiasm only to discover that we have a leak. It’s takes until the end of February for the leak to be fixed and for an air conditioning unit to be fitted to the celling. Completed by some awesome heat lamps, we now have a very sexy and very functional print premises. And then along came March…
But this isn’t a sad story, quite the opposite, in fact if all I had to write about was a struggling business, during a pandemic where people have lost so much, then you could argue that I have been very lucky indeed. But alas we did loose a loved one and as a family that hits you hard, particularly, as many people have experienced with elderly and ill relatives, we weren’t able to see them nearly enough.
Loosing someone is hard enough, we know that only too well, The past 5 years have been traumatic. Dad’s Place itself was founded in memory of our Dad to capture treasured memories, but to loose anyone in 2020, certainly makes business struggles seem trivial.
They’re not though are they? Businesses’ represent so much more than the source of our income. They’re our structure, our daily focus, a source of motivation, sanity and vital interaction. However introverted a person you are, we are at a base level social beings.
For all the reasons documented above and many more, I’d like to say a massive thank you to every single customer, follower, friend and family member who has helped me to keep my sanity and my business on an even keel in 2020. i hope you know how much it means.
Hang in there lovely people. Here’s to a brighter future and a Happy New Year.