This year has been the best year yet for XL Displays. We have achieved so much, ranging from awards and increased growth to a huge expansion and fulfilling our charity donation targets.
Here’s a look back at all the things Team XL has accomplished in the past 12 months:
Sunday Times Fast Track 100
For the first time ever, we placed on the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league table. The Fast Track 100 is a national league table that is created in partnership with The Sunday Times and Virgin Atlantic, and it aims to celebrate private entrepreneurs on their success. XL Displays’ year-on-year sales growth and 49.29% overall growth over the last three years meant that we placed 84th on the list. Following the good news, our director, Joanne Bass, said: “It is such an honour to be included in the Fast Track 100 league table this year. Fast Track 100 is an amazing celebration of entrepreneurship in the UK and shows business people – especially start-up companies – that success is tangible.”
Awards
This year has not only been a big year for XL Displays as a company, but also for our director, Joanne. In the space of two months, she was awarded two awards courtesy of Forward Ladies. First of all, she won the Midlands title of Female Entrepreneur of the Year. Following her regional win, Joanne went on to win the national Female Entrepreneur of the Year award at the National Awards Summit. Upon receipt of her award, Joanne said: “I am beyond proud that I have won the Forward Ladies Female Entrepreneur award, it is such a humbling experience to be recognised on a national scale. I am a huge advocate for women in business, it’s something we live and breathe at XL Displays, with over 70% of our management team being women. I am thrilled to be a part of this network of powerful women, and winning this award has spurred me on to continue to grow the business, myself and support other women who are taking the plunge into the corporate world.”
Fabric Expansion
The summer saw us invest more money back into the business than ever before. We acquired a further two units conjoined to our current two units in order to make the move into fabric printing. We invested in a Monti Antonio sublimation calendar and two new inkjet printers. We also bought several sewing machines and hired seamstresses and a specially-trained dye-sublimation production team. In doing so we have been able to start printing our own fabric displays in-house. We decided to take the plunge into fabric for many reasons; the first of which being able to cut out the middleman and pass the savings on to our customers. The move has also allowed us to have maximum control over the quality of each product that is produced; as well as expanding our ever-growing team with the hiring of new staff.
Charity
Our partnership charity is Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice, and every year we aim to raise as much as we can for them. This year, we managed to raise £4,469.53 for the hospice. This money has gone towards providing palliative care for terminally ill patients within the hospice through the medium of new equipment, staff and basic care necessities. In order to raise the money, we tackled a 5k inflatable run, the dragon boat race and another 5k fun run. We will be donating the proceeds from our Christmas jumper day on Friday to the hospice which we hope will tip up over the £4,500.00 mark.
In addition to the money we have raised for Sue Ryder, we also raised an additional £80.00 for Children In Need. As well as this, back in May, we donated 1,429 items to the Peterborough Food Bank which was enough to feed 64 families for a whole week.
Since November 14th, we have been running a Christmas Present Appeal in partnership with the Salvation Army. The aim of this appeal was to make sure that no child in Peterborough went without a toy this Christmas, and so we decided to get other businesses and people in the area involved. We opened our doors to the public and used our office as a collection hub for donations. We were overwhelmed by the response and we were taken aback by people’s generosity. We are proud to announce that overall, we collected over 600 toys. This will hopefully be enough to make sure that no child goes without this December.
It has been an astonishing year that has been filled with milestone after milestone. Everything from the Fast Track 100 to hitting 10k Trustpilot reviews has spurred us on and kept us motivated to keep up the hard work.
We couldn’t have asked for a better year and we look forward to seeing what 2019 has in store for us all.
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