2020: The Year That Tested Us

A year ago, I sat in this same spot and wrote about how 2020 was going to be "a great one." I had plans. Big plans. Expansion plans, product launch plans, maybe-finally-get-a-real-office plans.

Well. 2020 had other plans.

Let's Start with the Hard Stuff

I'm not going to sugarcoat it: 2020 was brutal. The pandemic threw everything we knew into a blender. Supply chains that had taken years to build? Disrupted overnight. A team that thrived on being together? Scattered to home offices, kitchen tables, and at least one well-appointed closet.

There were weeks where I didn't know if we'd make it. I'm saying that out loud because I think it's important to be honest. Running a small business during a global crisis is lonely and frightening and full of decisions that don't have right answers.

I lost sleep. I worried about our team — not just their jobs, but their health, their mental wellbeing, their families. I worried about our customers, many of whom were going through their own crises. I worried about whether the company I'd built from nothing was going to survive.

What Actually Happened

Here's the plot twist: not only did we survive, we grew. E-commerce as an industry boomed as people shifted to online shopping, and we were in the right place at the right time. Revenue increased significantly. We expanded to new markets. We added team members across multiple countries.

But let me be clear: growth during a pandemic doesn't feel like growth. It feels like running on a treadmill that keeps speeding up while someone throws obstacles at you. Every win came with a new problem. Higher sales meant more customer service inquiries. More markets meant more shipping complications. More team members meant more onboarding during a time when nobody could meet in person.

We were growing and struggling at the same time. I think a lot of companies experienced this in 2020, and nobody really talks about how disorienting it is.

The Things I'm Proud Of

Here's what I'll remember about 2020:

I'll remember the team. How they adapted without complaining. How they checked on each other without being asked. How our warehouse crew showed up every single day, even when the world felt scary, because they knew people were counting on them.

I'll remember the donations. Giving away thousands of products to families in need wasn't a business decision — it was a human one. And it reminded us all why we're here.

I'll remember hitting 20,000 reviews and realizing that behind every number is a person who trusted us enough to spend their money with us and then cared enough to tell us what they thought.

I'll remember the customer emails. The ones that said "your product made a hard day better." The ones that thanked us for fast shipping when everything else was delayed. The ones that reminded us, over and over, that what we do matters to people.

What E-commerce Became in 2020

The pandemic didn't just boost online shopping — it fundamentally changed what people expect from it. Customers want transparency. They want to know where their order is, when it's arriving, and what to do if something goes wrong. They want to feel like they're buying from people, not algorithms.

That shift plays to our strengths. We've always tried to be personal, responsive, and honest. In 2020, those qualities went from "nice to have" to "essential." Companies that treated customers like numbers lost them. Companies that treated them like people earned loyalty that will last far beyond the pandemic.

The Real Win

If you'd asked me in January what a successful 2020 would look like, I would have talked about revenue targets and product launches and market expansion. And yeah, we hit a lot of those marks.

But the real win of 2020 was staying human. It was keeping our values intact when it would have been easy to cut corners. It was taking care of our team when the pressure said to push harder. It was donating products when the accountant said to hold inventory. It was answering every customer email personally when the volume said to automate.

The real win was getting to the end of the hardest year any of us can remember and still being able to say: we're proud of how we handled it.

2021, we're ready for you. Whatever you've got, we've got a team that can handle it.

— Stan