I'm sure we can all agree that 2020 is a year we'll never forget. For us, we lived through a global pandemic, Brad started his aviation career, we got pregnant, had a baby and also had to completely re-structure our business due to the pandemic. Due to all of these changes, our business has changed in many ways. I thought I would do a little recap of the year and let you know about some changes that are coming for Sozo in 2021.
Market Life
Up until 2020, one of our biggest focuses for our business was selling at markets and events. Before the pandemic, we would do 1-3 markets or events a month. However, due to the pandemic, in 2020 we participated in two. 😅 This was a huge shift for us — we had no idea how the year was going to look like and if we would be able to pay our rent and bills every month.
Because of this change, we had to shift all of our attention towards selling online. In the end, I would say this dramatic and sudden shift in how we were running our business was a huge blessing. We had been selling online for a few years, but we now had to make it our primary focus. We started selling on additional marketplaces and rebuilt our website.
I've been getting asked here and there, "Are you going to return to markets full-time once the pandemic is over with?" To be honest, probably not. We will still do a few markets a year but we will not be doing as many as we used to. Now that our baby is here, the most important thing for us is to spend time together as a family. We will continue to focus on selling online for 2021 and beyond. It's allowed us a lot more flexibility and time together as a family. And for that, I'm forever grateful. However, like I just mentioned, we will still do a few local ones a year — you can always check our market schedule to see if we will be near you! We also have several stockists across Wisconsin and Illinois that carry our signs, click here to see if there's one near you.
A New Website
If you're reading this now, then you're officially on our new website! This took me several months and a lot of patience to put together. 🙃 But I'm so proud of it! We had our last website host for a few years and we really needed a change. This website allows us a lot more functionality on the back-end, it's more streamlined and not so glitchy as our last one.
We are excited to be able to roll-out new features that we were not able to before with our last website. We really hope this new website is a better experience for you!
We have a lot more in the works that I'm excited to share with you through the next few months — but for now, I'll quit the rambling and pause here 😉
2020 was a wild ride but it had a lot of blessings beyond the chaos. It made us parents and allowed us to grow our business in ways I never thought were possible. So for that, I'm so grateful for this past year. And a major thanks to you for being a part of our journey as we continually grow in so many ways. Here's to a new year! May it be full of kindness and grace.
-Courteney