2021 Summary: Increased revenue, new challenges, and we almost died with the supply crisi

We're not ones for playing the victim, but we won't deny that 2021 has been a tough, intense, and rewarding year. All three have permeated everything we've done. We've changed suppliers, run out of stock (several times), and expanded our team while embarking on a new phase of R&D. Today's SACH is different from what it has been for the last 29 years .

Throughout 2021, we made every effort to maintain the service and quality our customers deserve. We reinvented ourselves, performing all sorts of feats to ensure we didn't let you down: we transformed products, disassembling and reassembling them with different components, created a paint shop from scratch, and even manufactured 3D-printed parts to minimize the impact of supply chain disruptions. In short, we put all our creativity and potential to work.

WE AUDITED OURSELVES AND CHANGED OUR STRATEGY

“Every cloud has a silver lining.”

SACH was unsustainable. In 2019, before the pandemic hit, we began considering moving part of our production to Spain, specifically to Valladolid. We meticulously analyzed the situation to try and make the numbers work, but we weren't competitive if we started producing there . Then 2020 arrived, and the landscape changed completely. We managed well until July because we were fortunate enough to have a fully stocked warehouse when the pandemic hit. But when we started new production runs, our suppliers began informing us of price increases: 10% here, 27% there, triple the cost of shipping... We didn't pass these costs on to our customers and adjusted our margins as much as possible, but in 2021, we realized it was simply unsustainable.

ON THE VERGE OF DIE OF SUCCESS

The effort to avoid passing on the same price increase paid off. Our distributors increased the number of orders, and we opened new distributors—in other words, we needed to increase production while the world was in lockdown. Thanks to the increase in sales, in March 2021 we launched the largest production run of vacuum cleaners in our history . We negotiated with all our suppliers in the face of rising raw material prices, began bringing in the first urgent containers, and… BAM! The ship Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal. Who would have thought that with everything that was going on, something like this could happen? We were forced to bring in transformers and other components by plane to complete the electronics for our vacuum cleaners. But it didn't end there. Some suppliers in China were paralyzed by power outages, and our production slowed down.

There were times when we feared SACH would be in danger, but ultimately, after many calls and by being honest, we were able to fulfill all the orders. This has generated a significant workload, which hasn't allowed us to move forward with new developments at the desired speed, but be warned, 2022 is going to be full of surprises .

WE UNLEASH OUR CREATIVITY, BRAINSTORMING 24/7

The situation was no longer what it used to be, so we reviewed the company's strategy and decided to completely overhaul it. We sought new suppliers to maintain our competitiveness and contacted companies all over the world: Taiwan, the USA, Portugal, Turkey, Germany, Poland, South Korea, Italy, and of course, Spain. Ultimately, we were determined that manufacturing in Spain had to be viable , and we leveraged one of our country's greatest strengths: our engineers. With the help of 3D printing, we began prototyping.

The challenge: to make even better and more efficient products. Even under stressful circumstances, we all pulled together and began an unprecedented brainstorming session. In 2021, we designed products from scratch and improved the design of existing products.