The Promo Addict was named Sherwood Park’s Most Resilient Business
In 2020 the Sherwood Park District Chamber of Commerce awards ceremony looked much different. There was no Gala event, the speakers were all at the Chamber offices while the recipients were spread out across the county, with some nominees at their house via Zoom and some nominees at 2 official parties in town. Even the award categories were slightly different. They still did the Young Entrepreneur award, the business of the year award and more, but this year they added a new category for most resilient business.
Who was in the running?
The Promo Addict was fortunate to be nominated for this award amongst 2 other amazing finalists: Buffet Royale and Browns Social House. Both restaurants are staples of the food scene in Sherwood Park, so we knew it would be a dead heat in the voting.
Why did we win?
The key elements of our resiliency were manufacturing and decorating masks in house, purchasing manufacturing equipment to sublimate items as well as using our space to open a BBQ shop in our reception area.
Now that it is 2021, what is the plan?
In January 2021, we doubled our retail footprint. The Promo Addict moved our promotional products division upstairs and expanded to allow our staff the ability to socially distance even more than we did downstairs. We have new storage space for program products and stocked items for our customers. We have expanded our uniform offerings to include more stock and decoration on demand opportunities.
As Technology Changes, so do we!
Before COVID, we made a goal to launch 100 online stores in 2020. Even despite COVID, our investment in technology has paid off! Last year nearly 30% of all our orders came in using an online store platform. Although we did not achieve our goal of getting 100 stores off the ground, we are proud to say that we built 77 online promotional products stores in 2020 for our customers. If I was challenged to forecast what this year will bring, I would predict more of the same, with nearly half of all orders beind generated through online webshop activity.
Kitting is the wave of the future
Companies are trying to find ways to add more value to their promotions. With shipping costs being as high as they are, it doesn’t make sense to distribute pens or coffee mugs to your people unless they are paired with another item, put in a box or added to a kit. We have seen a huge spike in consumer requests for custom boxes. One of the services are expecting to take a rise this year is making and filling custom promotional items kits for direct mail. This is a service that we are well setup for, in fact this year if you are one of the people who gets gifts from us, you might start to see them being packed in custom sustainable cardboard boxes as well!