2011: A year in review.

It’s the end of the year, and what a year it was. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone etc etc, and we just wanted to do a little wrap up of how it was for us, a few highlights, and mostly just to say thanks to all of you that bought some stuff off us, talked rubbish with us on facebook or done some tweets and stuff on twitters. You guys are cool, and without you we’d all probably just be digging holes somewhere (which wouldn’t be all that bad given the tan we’d get and the lunch bars we’d get to eat at).

When we were talking about what happened this year, the first thing that came to mind was the Christchurch Earthquake. While it’s never nice to see such tragedy and loss, I think the lasting memory will be the way NZ came together and the sense of unity, community and love that was shown throughout the country. It was humbling to just be a part of it, and we’re extremely proud to have such amazing customers that were happy to part with their funds to support four charities. To think that – together with you customers – we raised $124,000 for Victim Support, the Salvation Army, Canterbury SPCA, & St John is an amazing achievement – definitely our proudest moment as a business to date.

That was deep. Other highlights were the World Cup, and again being part of a collective community spirit cheering on the All Blacks. Being on the Official World Cup path was great, and getting involved with the Piri tees and all the rest was awesome. We didn’t sleep much on account of all the printing we were doing, but it was totally worth it.

As a business, we’ve grown super substantially this year; acquiring more equipment for screen printing, more heavy-drinking staff members, starting mrvintage.com.au, worked with some new business partners, added a whole range of new product lines, and just generally streamlining the business so we don’t make as many mistakes as we used to. We’ll continue doing this next year, where the journey will continue to bigger and better things – and we’re stoked to have an awesome group of customers that help us shape our business by telling us handy things like how big boobs don’t always work with the crew necks so we need to add more vees and scoops. That stuff’s helpful, and we always like talking about boobs as well, so it’s win-win.

So yeah – thanks heaps and look after yourself over Christmas and New Years. We’ll see you in January where we’ll be undertaking a heavy detoxification of the system.

Cheers, the team at Mr Vintage.