As we closed the book on 2019, off the back of celebrating our most successful year in business at Fresh Flow, 2020 promised to be another huge leap in the right direction. A year that promised full working diaries, a host of exciting new projects for us to get stuck into for clients bold, old and new, and, such is the territory with all businesses of our size, a year with plenty of surprises. The latter hasn’t failed to deliver…
When the Fresh Flow Team returned to work in January of this year, there were a million different reasons to be excited. We were about to embark on a start to a new year which would give us the platform to fulfill our strategic mission that we had already mapped out. As a company, we have grown, offering our clients added value like never before. Our Client Services and Digital teams were delivering the quality of work that had our clients singing their praise from the rooftops. January came and went without a hitch, ensuring delivery of our best start to a calendar year.
We moved into February with some serious momentum, again planned working calendars were chock-a-block, conversations regarding recruitment drives were rife, and only 5 weeks in to 2020 our year was in danger of snowballing out of control for all of the right reasons. Then, the third week in, like so many other businesses in the South Wales region and further afield, we were introduced to a new friend called Storm Dennis.
Storm Dennis came and went over 3 days in February and was kind enough to engulf us in 5 feet of water and completely destroy the offices (may I add, they were gorgeous offices by the way) which we had worked so hard to turn in to our home; a home we were so proud of. A huge setback, but like so many businesses and friends close to our hearts who had experienced the same, it was a case of regroup, rebuild and go again. Within 2 days, the gorgeous folk at Alcumus in Nantgarw offered us a new home, our fabulous I.T support team at ICT Group in Taffs Well had us fully equipped and, amazingly, the Fresh Flow Team were firing on all cylinders again in no time.
As we waved goodbye to the bumpy ride in February, we rallied around, took stock of what had happened, and embraced what the long road ahead looked like. Again, there was so much to celebrate. Okay, so we were 5 months away from being back in our flooded and rather damp home, but our temporary accommodation ensured that we still had the facilities and platform to continue our journey and succeed just as intended.
Along came the 17th March, St Patricks Day, a day we would normally remember for toasting after work with a well-earned pint of the black stuff. This year, the 17th March would be remembered for very different reasons…There’s no need to go in to any real detail of what happened next, as it has affected each and every single one of us in so many different ways. Words like ‘unprecedented’ and ‘pandemic’ have chipped away at us for the last few months. Anyway, you’ve probably by now guessed what we are on about. It is how we responded to the situation that counts!
So here we are, it’s July and normally would be the time of year Fresh Flow would be looking forward to our annual summer shindig to celebrate our achievements for the first half of the year. Yet we find ourselves sat here, albeit with different reasons, but with still so much to celebrate….Our clients have been phenomenal. Our staff, working from home (a lonely old job at times if you knew what our office was like), have responded unbelievably well, delivering the types of results that have guaranteed our success over the years…our office has been completely refurbished from top-bottom (we never liked that blue carpet anyway 😊) and is almost ready for us to move back in…and more to the point we are still here to tell our tale. The types of achievements that if you’d whispered to us 7 months ago, we would have laughed, but here we are celebrating for so many different reasons.
It’s absolutely crazy to think that we are only just halfway through 2020, but rest assured, after what the last 6 months we and so many others have experienced, whatever the rest of the year decides to throw our way, we’ll be ready.
That’s our story so far this year anyway.
I’d love to hear yours! Give me a call on 01443 440080. Jon