2020: Our year in numbers

What a year it was. As we begin to unwind for a well-deserved break over the holidays, I have been looking back. It’s been a challenging year in so many ways. I think that our team has coped by staying focused on solutions. Now, I won’t try and make out that it’s all been fun and games, because we all know that it hasn’t. But I’m happy to share some of the things we are proud of achieving this year.

We doubled in size

If you’d have told me on January 1st that our team would host over 925+ virtual interviews, I would have laughed. But that’s what we did. In fact, we added 31 new post-sales specialists to our team this year. Of those, 25 were onboarded remotely!

We’ve had 50+ vacancies across of our departments and offices. Speaking of which, we opened two new ones this year. In February we opened our Paris office and are very proud of our wonderful team there. Soon after, in April, we launched our first US office in New York! Now I think about it, I’m not surprised we had so many interviews after all...

We celebrated five years of parcelLab and onboarded new clients and partnerships

I want to tread carefully here, because I know that there are plenty of people in different industries that aren’t experiencing a similar progression. What I will say is that we’re proud to have made new partnerships this year and strengthened existing ones. It’s been great to see how our solution has helped our customers through their challenges – more than ever, in fact. We’ve signed over 80+ new contracts. Our new clients include Farfetch, Shop-Apotheke, Conrad, NU-IN, Paul Valentine and Springlane. Welcome to the parcelLab family - we’re so excited to have you on board!

We're also happy to have won some impressive awards this year – most recently, we were chosen as one of CB Insight’s Top 100 Retail Tech companies for 2020. We won Best Tech for Clients at the Retail Project Awards and were ranked in the Top 50 in RWRC’S Discovery 50 Global Tech Start-ups.

With time on our hands we focused on research

This year, when it became clear that it would be a lot different to what we first expected, we decided to take a step back from our pre-existing plans and consider where we could add most value to our customers and partners. We created a dedicated whitepaper to help brands manage the challenges of COVID-19.

This summer, we surveyed thousands of online customers to see how expectations have changed and developed some research on the consumer perspective of OX. Then, we compiled all of our research, data and experience into creating ‘The New Consumer’ - a guide exploring how the pandemic has affected how consumers shop.

Resilience was and is the theme

It has to be said, I’m really proud of the team this year. As an international scale-up, we’re pretty accustomed to video calls and the alike. But of course, this year took everything to the extreme. We predict that the team have had 4200+ virtual meetings this year... another fact I wouldn’t have believed if you’d told me 12 months ago. We’ve also had 33 whole team catch ups to keep everyone informed and connected to each other, no matter where they were.

To keep our team feeling valued, we sent care packages to each team member on four occasions, filled with a mixture of stuff to keep them safe and healthy, as well as things to keep them entertained and feeling connected. We didn’t let the pandemic dampen our famous parcelParties. We hosted seasonal events throughout the year to keep in touch and try to keep spirits high as best we could.

A year we’ll all remember

There’s so much more to be said for this year, but I want to focus on what we have managed to achieve in unfamiliar circumstances. We’ve worked hard and made good progress. I have big ideas and dreams for 2021.

Personally, I am really looking forward to our annual whole-team kick-off in January (virtual, of course), where our teams can share their goals for the year and create plans to get us there. But for now, it’s time for a restful holiday season. I’d like to take the time to thank the parcelLab team, our wider network and our wonderful customers.

Wishing you a happy, healthy new year.

Tobias Buxhoidt, parcelLab CEO & Founder