Celebrating 40,000 Packs!
Team Letter | May 20, 2024
May 20, 2024
Happy Monday, Alpaca!!!
When we are moving as quickly as we are, on as many things as we are, it can be hard to remember to step back and celebrate one of the things we do every day at 1104 12th Street that create impact in people’s lives, and achieve our mission of making it easy to support teachers.
Well, today we’re celebrating. Because last week, quietly on a Monday afternoon, Jack came and took away our 40,000th pack. OUR 40,000th PACK!
When you consider what that all means, you have to think about this: each of those packs carries $35 in retail value out to a teacher. That’s $1.4M in dollars saved to educators.
How about this: each of those packs carries a handwritten thank you note. Those handwritten notes take about 45 seconds for someone who cares about teachers to write. That’s 501 hours of thank you note writing that has happened at Alpaca.
It’s also (get ready for this) – 5,000 pounds of crinkle.
It’s countless hours of planning, prepping, ordering, receiving, unpacking, stocking, shelving, resetting the office, setting up lines, hosting team building groups, packing, packing, packing, boxing, printing labels, checking lists, rechecking lists, taping and taping, and sending out the door.
We started this company to make it easier to support teachers. And there is one person who has put more hours into act of physically making teachers’ lives better through our packs, and that is Marina. By my estimate, these 40,000 packs have been made possible by about 3,900 of Marina’s hours – hard-working, joyful, sometimes sweaty, sometimes late, sometimes delightful hours.
Marina, today’s Team Letter – and a HUGE part of this company win – belongs to you. Your leadership has put $1.4M back in teachers pockets, inspired hundreds of people to spend 500 hours writing thank you notes, and made a teeny vision into a huge reality.
I can’t wait to see what else we can do!
KB
PS: For your reference:
2022: 10,000 packs on the nose
2023: 20,012 packs
2024: 10,078 packs
Total: 40,090 packs out the door