By the grace of God and with a dash of luck, we got through the end of the year amazingly well. First, we anticipated the shutdown two weeks before the state announced that schools were closing. We lit fires under our staffs early, so that all but one of our high schools was able to include coverage of spring sports in their books. (The one that didn’t had an early virus scare and shut down a week before everyone else.) Next, we were able to work with schools to adjust their numbers of pages and copies all the way through April. We were also fortunate in that Arizona, where we print and bind our yearbooks, never went into a full shutdown. In short, we delivered every single one of our yearbooks before every school’s original school out date, and not one of our schools wound up in the red.

 

Over the years, some prospective customers have expressed concern about working with a smaller, younger company like ours, wondering what would happen if “things went wrong.” Well, no one needs to wonder anymore. This year, just about everything went wrong. And it turns out that being smaller and younger wasn’t a weakness at all; we were more flexible, more nimble, and better able to take care of our customers.

 

“Exponentially better” is not just a clever marketing catchphrase; it is a proclamation of our commitment to excellence. And based on our performance during the craziest, most challenging school year ever, it is, quite simply, the truth.

 

Bret Barrett, CEO