08/01/2021 - Happy New Year!

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year - we are refreshed and open again (Optimise HQ reopened on Monday 4th) after our annual Christmas break.

The start of a New Year is always a great time to reflect and look back at the achievements of the past 12 months. If we rewind to April (when we were forced to close our doors and halt production) I couldn’t have dreamt that 9 months later, I’d be writing a look back on the year and about to say it turned out to be a good one.

Despite closing our doors for 2 months, dealing with everything that Covid threw at us (before, during and after we were closed) and adopting to this bizarre “new normal”, it’s fair to say that 2020 actually turned out to be brilliant year here at Optimise.

I know you don’t hear anything positive on the news with regards to business at the moment, but here at Optimise (plus everyone I talk to in the automotive industry, including all of our suppliers) we only really have positive things to report.
 

• Lockdown gave me (as a small business owner) the opportunity of a lifetime to work through our “to do” list. It's fair to say I’ve never worked as hard as I did throughout lockdown, behind the scenes lots of improvements were made (namely to the website and to our production processes). Plus over the coming months, we have lots of new and exciting things to share with you - many of which wouldn’t have been possible if we weren’t forced to close production, which allowed me the time to introduce these new things.
   
• Plus, following the initial period right at the start of Covid (when orders completed dropped off and we had to close as a result of that - the day we closed, we literally didn’t have an order to work on), we have never been busier and we continue to be busier than we’ve ever been.

The way in which the automotive communities have come together throughout these difficult times is incredible and it's testament to the wonderful people (all over the World) that we are lucky enough to call customers - thank you, to each & every one of you.

Ignoring the success of Optimise, personally (for me) it’s been a long hard slog to ensure the success (boy it’s tested me and pushed me in ways I didn’t imagine possible), as a small business owner 2020 was on a whole, terrible.

The uncertainty at times (especially when we were forced to close production without knowing and/or having any guarantee of what financial support would be available from the government and/or knowing when we would be able to reopen production), combined with the stress put on myself, to find ways to adapt to everything throughout the year, has been extremely testing.

I think it’s only right at this point to thank (or is that apologies?) those closest to me, without the support of my family and my closest friends, the past 12 months could have been very different.

It’s times like these that you truly appreciate those closest to you and I include my employees, John and Jack in that short list of people that I'd call family, I'm lucky to be surrounded by wonderful people.

This year certainly brought us at Optimise closer together (despite being physically further apart than ever) and that, can only be a good thing for everyone.

So, it’s good riddance to 2020 and hello to 2021… we’ve got this.


Have a great day.

Kind regards,
Andy & the Optimise Automotive team