Summer update from Alex

Dear Friends of FINDRA

How are you all? I hope you’re doing well and Covid-19 has not had too negative an impact on you or you family and friends.

What a strange time we’ve all been living through these last few months. Who would have thought back in January as we celebrated a New Year and new decade that we would all have to face a global pandemic?

For me on a personal and business level it has been a challenging time, but also a time of great reflection and opportunity and I wanted to give an update on how FINDRA as a small business has dealt with the impact of the pandemic.

Over the last few months I’ve had to make a lot of major decisions to find our way through and figure how to effectively survive it. This approach has worked well and I’m really pleased to say we appear to be in a good place (fingers crossed) and all being well our Innerleithen shop will open again in September, although our Edinburgh shop will be closed permanently.

Like many businesses, we’ve focused our energy towards online sales by improving our website and the online buying experience. This was always part of our 2020 strategy, but CV19 has really accelerated that process.

I’ve also looked at how the business operates, and as a result have streamlined many of our operational overheads, but sadly resulted in the hard decision to make a member of the team redundant.

Since then, I’ve rolled my sleeves up (even further), and along with Russell who joined the business in April, we have split many of the jobs and are working through a lot of stuff – fuelled by many cups of tea, coffee and of course some cake now and then!

We have also used the time to ‘get creative’, using the CV19 time to reflect on our lives and what’s important to us. For me, this has meant going back to why I started FINDRA and re-visit the core of the business. As a result we have done some great work around the brand and the story to how this all began.

We are really looking forward to sharing that in the next few weeks – so keep your eyes peeled!

We have also introduced our 3 new male ambassadors and we’re looking forward to working with them in the coming months.

Product-wise we have some new designs coming this autumn and will be growing the range significantly in 2021.

It feels like an exciting time and a new chapter in the FINDRA journey. I feel re-energised by the process we have just gone through and pretty positive about where we find ourselves.

There is still much uncertainty in the world and I don’t think we’ve felt the worst of the economic impact yet, so fingers crossed we can keep moving forward and that we come out the other side.

One thing I do know for sure is we couldn’t have got through this without you our lovely FINDRA customers and extended FINDRA family. Your support, kindness and custom has been fantastic and I genuinely believe that we would not be where we are today without you all.

So a massive thanks to each and everyone of you.

Here’s to the next chapter and new beginnings.

Stay safe and take care.

Love,

Alex and Team FINDRA xx