A 12 month look back, on a 12 month lock down for us at S7!

The last twelve months has been incredibly challenging. When the pandemic was announced in March 2020, we had just launched our brand-new charity campaign - #share77k – with the aim to take our fundraising efforts from £50,000 to £77,000 by the end of 2021 to celebrate our 10th birthday. Needless to say, due to everything else going on at that time, our launch did not get the response or amplification we hoped for, resulting in many of our events being postponed straight away. As of March 2020, we also had many travel, hospitality and retail clients working with us, and based on them not being able to operate we made the decision to cease our activity and ignore our contracts with them, giving them our full support. We gave everyone who was paused half a day of our time in free consultancy to supply them with latest trends and insights during this time. Evidently, we saw our monthly revenues drop by 50% from Feb 2020 to April 2020 - however despite this, we kept our staff working and fully paid to support our clients, with the intention that by keeping everyone together and supporting our clients, we will get through it stronger together. Despite our best efforts to keep morale high, we did have a few of the team leave for new ventures, and we with them the very best as they are all absolute great people. Its always a real shame seeing top talent leave, especially as our strategy is now paying dividends with many clients returning that were paused and seeing revenues and profits increase back to higher levels than ever before. Since the end of 2020, we have welcomed three new people into our team with another 2 joining in the next few months, so despite a challenging 12 months we have recovered well and are showing great ambition to drive the agency forward in 2021 and beyond and continue to make a huge difference to our community. As many charities have experienced, it has been incredibly tough over the last 12 months to fundraise, and once we launched our new #share77k charity campaign (literally same week as the pandemic was announced), we had to quickly pivot our events to adapt to the changing landscape but were more determined than ever to continue with our fundraising efforts to help make a difference, especially during lockdown to keep everyone engaged and spirits high.

We hosted an online quiz in March 2020, raising over £1,000 for charity
a golf day in October 2020, raising £6,000
another quiz night in November 2020 raising £1,200
and other fundraising initiatives, such as a LinkedIn charity rally
which overall helped to raise over £10,000 in 2020, which we were thrilled about.We have started 2021 strong too, with our S7 VIP quiz, using the REMO platform, welcoming a full house to an online virtual pub for another quiz night, this time raising £2,300 – bringing our total fundraising to £63,000 to date over the last 9 years – with 2 events lined up in 2021 to hopefully bring us to our target by the end of the year, with our charity golf day up next on July 7th in Brighton In the last 12 months, despite seeing our revenues drop by 50% following the pandemic, we have seen great growth and great results of late, with some YoY stats below (comparing April 2020 to April 2021):
126% increase in monthly revenues
Including back-to-back record months for the business in Feb & March 2021
Over 500% increase in monthly operating profit
300% increase in new business enquiriesIt has been a challenging 12 months for the business, but we have risen to the challenge and have stayed loyal to our ethos through, supporting our clients, team and our strong charity ethos of making a difference to our community, both local and beyond by pushing on with our charity efforts. Being supportive and helping is a big trait for any business and making decisions that are not short-term focused is difficult when there are so many unknowns, but I am just pleased we have bounced back and our strategy has paid off. It’s going to be a big year for us as we turn 10 and so excited about what’s planned for the end of the year as we hopefully hit our fundraising target and line up many events with clients, partners, team and our everyone involved with our charity events – to celebrate together and have some fun – that’s what our events are all about! We are still in a period of transition, welcoming new team members and adapting to a new hybrid way of working, between full remote and the odd day at co-working spaces, but I am ever so proud of what we have achieved and feeling very positive about what’s ahead for us at Search Seven. Thanks to everyone for your continued support!