Oh, what a year!

Posted on January 23, 2007 | Permalink

By Lane Casteix

The year 2006 will go down in our history and our memory. Yes, 2005 was a big deal because of Katrina but 2006 will be remembered in a big way.

In January we got back into our renovated offices, albeit we used folding tables and cheap office chairs, in which the foam quickly collapsed into nothingness, leaving sore backsides at the end of the day. We kind of got used to the openness of the gutted office, and the new furniture and panel walls delivered in late December almost seemed to close the place in.

Business was brisk last year! That is a very good thing! We started with average sales, but it picked up quickly and never let up. We ended the year with our gross sales nearly double that of 2005. True, 2005 with Katrina was a bad year for sales, but even with that baseline, to nearly double it...?! I'm impressed with what the team did with such minimum resources! (They did so well, I considered keeping the folding tables so as not to break the "spell.")

The successful year and the new furniture coming at the end kind of capped off everything and helped build morale. The two coming together said with finality that SPAR was still very much alive and would remain a viable entity for years to come. That was reassuring, considering only sixteen months before with flooded offices and disrupted business, things weren't so certain.

We are ready for another fifty years now!