Audrey & Bear 2021 in a nutshell:
-Launched 13 different groups of designs
-Launched 10 new products
-Donated thousands of swaddle blankets to NICU babies across the US
-Lost our fur baby and namesake of the company, Bear
-Launched a brand new completely custom production system (a project that took 1.5 years to complete)
-Said hello and goodbye to some amazing team members
-Purchased a building and then waited on the construction completion for 8 months
-Were without a production studio for 3 1/2 weeks while we waiting for permitting
-Learned SO MANY VALUABLE LESSONS!!!
I wish I could adequately describe my feelings over the course of this year. I have personally become a much different, more capable person. Not necessarily because I embraced each challenge with a can-do attitude, but because in some ways I was forced to change. Fact: 2021 was not kind to small businesses. There were advertising landscape shifts, supply chain problems, extreme highs and lows that often made you feel like you had zero control. I could write a novel about all of the business failures from this year (keeping it real). Personally I am grateful that I have survived thus far an intense battle with post-partum depression, a subject I previously knew nothing about.
Goodbye 2021!!! I won't miss you, but I will always look back on you with respect and gratitude. This year was easily more difficult than 2020, and that's saying something. From small business challenges to personal challenges sometimes it felt like I could never come up for air. In fact, I still feel like that pretty frequently! HOWEVER, even though there were a lot of struggles, there were also some amazing successes and lessons learned.
I hope your year cultivated you as much as mine did AND that 2022 will give us all a break!
Best,
Rachel
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