Being a company that predominately offers signage, point of sale and event displays, like most of the country, Covid bought our lovely little business to a grinding halt back in March.
I think I speak for the rest of the team when I say, it didn’t take long for us to realise how much we actually miss work when we’re told we can’t do it. Yes, like everybody we’ve had days at work when we’ve moaned before and wished we weren’t doing it – but if anything, the breaks Covid put on have made us all realise how much we enjoy what we’re doing, and how good the team is that we’re doing it with.
Like every man and his dog who runs a signage company, we started selling some Covid safety products – just to keep our toes in the water and have a little bit of work to minimise the losses we were set to make. I’m pleased we did this – it kept a few people out of Furlough and enabled some level of normality during a very strange time. It’s also nice to think that we’ve helped some other businesses prepare for making their workplaces safer, with our range of safety signage.
Thankfully we’ve had some other things to keep our minds occupied – we also design and manufacture point of sale displays / point of purchase displays. These always take time and we’re used to working on POS projects in a busy atmosphere – it’s been quite refreshing working on new ideas without the phones going nuts and more work rolling in.
The team at Bigprinting have been fantastic from the moment this all kicked off – from that 3 weeks prior to lockdown where we implemented our own safety measures and asked some people to work at home – to be very understanding if they had to be put into Furlough. Everybody understood that every decision had been based around the long term future of the business while maintaining the priority of keeping everybody safe.
I’m really proud of our approach as a business, and how we’ve stuck together throughout. It’s been a refreshing couple of weeks where enquires seem to be coming back in – not at the same rate as before – but it’s nice for us all to be working on jobs that aren’t in any way related to Covid.
This week alone we’ve worked on 7 different Point of Sale Display projects, 3 shop fit-outs and a shop in shop design for a store in France (can’t wait to be allowed there). We’ve also had numerous Cambridge Signs enquiries, not to mention general print, posters and sticker printing.
In the background of all of this we’ve also been working on a couple of new Apps – we’re hoping to shake up the safety signage industry while introducing a new product to the consumer market.
While it’s easy to be sucked into the doom and gloom, people seem positive. Our team is positive and we’re all looking forward to coming through this on the other side as an even stronger company, who all value what we’re doing more than ever before.
Thanks for all of your continued support. We look forward to working with you (even if it’s one Zoom or Teams!)