WELCOME How are you today? Are you really confident about the future, just like we are? Are you ready for 2021? These seem simple questions, but the answers aren’t as easy. Just like you, we spent the last year thinking about what to do next. The main changes for us were, and still are, the delays of shipments from the Far East, cancellation of fairs and of course the lockdown in many of our sales markets. It soon turned out that our cash & carries kept going well and are a good alternative for other sales channels. For that reason, we expanded the cash & carries further, opening new branches in Kolbermoor, Ahrensburg and Zurich, in addition to the branches we already have in Aalsmeer, Venlo, Belsele, Brussel and Luzern. After the first markets cautiously opened in May and June, the order flows got going again. An enormous amount of orders caused us to have to work in shifts during the last months of the year, to get everything to the customer in time. But we are not really confident about what the future is going to look like, will there be fairs once again? Will you visit them? Will fairs still be profitable for us? We are not sure and that is why we decided to set up agent networks in countries where we were not sufficiently represented yet. As a result, we now have professional agents in England, Italy and Spain, representing our brand. We are still negotiating with a number of countries. Maybe you have seen already that we worked very hard in 2020, on a beautiful summer collection of mainly natural materials like seagrass, jute, palm leaves and recycled elmwood. These product lines are a great success and will be expanded in the years to come, so we can keep surprising you through all the seasons, with our beautiful natural collections. Early this year, also our new website will go live. We have reorganized the categories using filter options, to make them even more comprehensible. With even more product information and, of course, even better pictures for great online ordering convenience. So, there has been a lot of news and the entire Mars & More team is looking forward to making 2021 a fantastic year, together with you. We look forward to welcome you at one of the fairs, cash & carries or on the internet. With kind regards, Yvonne van Raalte-Mars Founder Mars & More 3
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