To say that S-One had a fabulous 2021 would certainly be an understatement! It was a year to remember because our success was marked by growth across the board – from strengthening and adding to our teams to breaking sales records. The only way our company moved was up.
The SOUL of S-One
I recently read a book by NFL Hall of Famer and Super Bowl Champion Tony Dungy. The principles he writes about in SOUL of A TEAM remind me that S-One’s Core Values mean much more than simply hanging on display at our offices. Tony’s Selflessness, Ownership, Unity, and Larger Purpose are akin to our Selfless Service
S-One Powers the Communities We Live In
These core values may be the foundation for our 2021 success; however, it’s our teams that made things happen at S-One and keeping all engaged and healthy during the pandemic proved to be less of a challenge than expected. Our E3 team did a great job encouraging us to get outside and exercise while sharing recipes in the second version of S-One’s Holiday Recipe Book.
We also continued to find time for team members to give back to our communities. Here are just a few highlights from 2021:
- For Earth Day, team members planted the first of several trees at Sarasota’s new Bay Park Conservancy.
- Our local Economic Development team also enjoyed our leadership in assisting in its mission to grow, diversify, and sustain the economy of Sarasota County while enhancing our unique natural and cultural environment.
- Over the summer, our team members passed out food to those in need in Sarasota and Manatee Counties.
- In Barcelona, our team partnered with Educo ONG to help with scholarship dining that guarantees a healthy meal each day to children at risk of poverty and social exclusion in school canteens.
- Our team continued serving the All-Faiths Food Bank for the 10th year in a row, raising a record-setting amount during their holiday fundraiser.
- After taking 2020 off due to Covid, our Sarasota team returned to road clean up on Siesta Drive.
Caring for our community is essential to S-One and part of a much larger purpose for our company.
Bucking The Trend
2021 is being called the “Great Resignation.” While droves of people resign from their positions for new and exciting opportunities, S-One is bucking that trend. Our team members need not look elsewhere as they take on new challenges right here at S-One. We also added new team members to the family in 2021. From Marketing to Operations and all divisions in between, the contribution of our new hires is woven through the fabric of our company accomplishments.
A Discipline For Learning
Having a discipline for learning is key to individual success at S-One. New and current team members participated in professional and personal development courses via S-One University, LinkedIn Learning, and Hubspot Academy. In 2021, we had 112 unique users of S1U, 559 LinkedIn Learning courses were completed, and 107 HubSpot certifications were received.
And we extend this philosophy to our interns. In 2021, we welcomed four remote interns serving in various areas of our company. They received training in CliftonStrengths, SMART Goal Setting, Resume Building, and Interview Training. Interns learned new professional development skills with S1U, and they put all of their training to good use by creating a final video presentation of their experiences.
As a CliftonsStregths based company, we embrace and teach the CliftonStrengths model so that our team members can understand and optimize their top strengths while finding ideal working environments for each to thrive.
And the winner is…
We believe it is essential to recognize our global team members’ outstanding accomplishments. Our quarterly awards recognize the best of the best at S-One, and we were excited to welcome another Founders’ Club class to a relaxing vacation at Ponte Vedra Inn and Club.
S-One has always taken pride in its culture, and in 2021 our culture and sustainability efforts were recognized. We were named a Certified Great Place to Work as team members describe S-One as a fun, encouraging, and exciting workplace. S-One was also recognized in the Best of Small Business Awards, named one of the country’s most elite small businesses.
Additionally, S-One earned a prestigious Silver Stevie Award recognizing S-One’s dedication to team members’ health and safety during the pandemic.
Finally, All-Faiths Food Bank named S-One as the 2021 Corporate Group of the Year. We raised over $10,000, exceeding our initial goal of $6,500. Our donation helped provide 3.2 million holiday meals for children, families, seniors, and veterans.
Leading In Sustainability
As the global corporate community evolves to be more environmentally conscious, S-One continues to be a part of the conversation and a leader in our industry. In 2021, we were honored for our efforts in sustainability by being recognized as a Sustainable Business by PRINTING United Alliance. We were recognized as a TLMI Champion of Change in labels and packaging. And, our ReEarth solutions received the Calvin Frost Sustainability Leadership award from TLMI.
On the product side, our push to be more environmentally conscious has never been stronger through product innovations and new partnerships.
Here are just a few highlights:
- We launched the Elements canvas portfolio that includes a canvas product made from recycled water bottles.
- We reinforced our ink recycling program and the HP Large Format Media Take-Back Program.
- Some of our ReEarth products received USDA BioPreferred certification, recognizing them as compostable.
- We launched the Sustainable Resource Guide to answer our customers’ questions about sustainable packaging.
Our industry is changing fast, and S-One continues to lead the way to environmental consciousness and sustainability.
New Opportunities
S-One can never be considered “insane” (doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results). We can, however, be called “opportunists.”
Grand Format
2021 was the year S-One said, “Go big or go home.” Our entry into grand format printing created quite the splash across the industry. We’ve gone big with our new partnership with EFI and the addition of the Canon Colorado to our portfolio, and we’re not going home!
Elements
What do you do when you have a great line of canvas products to offer your customers? You create an even greater line of canvases to provide your customers, and that’s what we did when we launched Elements. Each collection in the Elements portfolio is specifically designed for specific market segments. Need a high-quality canvas for discerning customers? We have that covered in our Gemstone Collection. What about the customer running high-volume canvas prints out of their shop? The Quarry Collection is designed to be durable and high-performance. And finally, for those looking to leave the Earth a little better than they found it, our Boundless Collection features canvas made from recycled water bottles. So, the best just got better with Elements, and our customers are agreeing!
Building the Metaverse
In our current pandemic environment, companies like ours are creating new ways to deliver their messages, and doing it professionally and virtually is the new reality. In 2021, we continued developing our virtual experiences.
We launched the Click and Print Experience in partnership with Canon, a 5-day event featuring webinars with some of the most respected photographers in the world, several live Q&A sessions with those photographers, and a virtual photography contest.
Next up was our The LexJet Experience. This virtual event featured 38 booths, with 13 of those booths paying us to create a customized experience, fully funding the development and execution of the entire event. As we advance in 2022, we’ll be bringing new and exclusive content from our partners that will continue to drive new traffic.
Growing our Digital Ecosystem
It’s not a stretch to tout our eCommerce experiences as the Amazon of our space. LexJet online, DigiPrint Supplies, and BMG online continue to set records daily. Since 2019, our eCommerce has grown over 200% in online sales, generating nearly half of all combined sales. But if you stopped there, you’d miss the bigger picture of what’s happening in our online presence. Here are some highlights of S-One’s online presence in 2021.
- DigiPrint-Supplies.com saw nearly 2 million sessions in 2021. What’s a session? When you go to the website, that’s a session. When you go back, that’s another session. That number’s 25% higher than 2020.
- LexJet’s Facebook page drove over 10% more revenue over 2020. In other words, people are influenced to buy products from us based on our investment in Facebook. But, here’s the crazy part: When you consider how much we spent in Facebook advertising, $1 invested returned over $46. Don’t you wish you could see that kind of return on your stock investments?
- In 2021, our Marketing team got very active on LinkedIn and all of our pages saw a combined year-over-year growth of 11,761% in engagement. (No, that’s not a typo).
- And here’s one more for you. All of our YouTube channels grew 9% year-over-year in watch time, and across all our channels, people watched the equivalent of almost 1,163 days’ worth of content.
The bottom line to these stats is that our subsidiaries continue to increase their presence online in every regard. And in 2022, with the launch of S-One LP’s platform, the entire S-One ecosystem will continue to lead our industry through the major online channels.
Shattering Ceilings
I promised myself that I wouldn’t focus solely on numbers in this reflection. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least share some with you. Our S-One business grew an astounding 21% year over year in 2021!
In 2021, businesses around the world experienced more challenges than ever. From supply chain issues to the “Great Resignation,” companies struggled to keep their doors open and products on the shelf. But, as we always do, S-One took the road less traveled and we broke just about every record in our company’s history:
- Best sales and margin months in company history
- Best sales and margin quarter in company history
- Best sales and margin year in company history
- The highest number of orders in company history
- We shipped 2.25 million products and over 214,000 orders to customers worldwide! And, if that’s not enough, 98% of our orders were shipped the day the order was placed!
S-One crushed it in 2021 in ways we never imagined. Think about it; we’re still in a pandemic. People are still working from home. But we proved that success is possible with people who do what they love, love what they do, and, in Tony Dungy’s words, the team has SOUL!