2020 was supposed to be a big year for Simple & Smart.
After an excellent 2019, our Company was ready for a great year of growth, we were finalizing new business relationships with important distributors in the medical-dental field. We were ready to better support our customers also with the addition of new products and technical innovations.
We had planned to attend numerous trade shows and visit our partners and their companies around the world.
Already at the end of January, however, news of an unusual virus from China began to arrive.
It seemed like a local problem, therefore in February we left for Dubai to attend an exhibitors at the most important dental fair in the Middle East: ADEEC 2020.
The fair went very well and we met numerous customers and established new collaborations; but it was already clear that something new and unexpected was about to upset the planet.
The first masks began to show and worrying news from all over the world followed.
Upon returning from Dubai, it still seemed like this attack of a notorious virus was a manageable thing and it certainly wasn’t going to happen to us, not here in Italy.
Unfortunately, at the end of February, the first cases of Coronavirus appeared in Italy and the emergency broke out in a few days.
Our company is based in Bergamo and unfortunately, our city was the largest European (perhaps world) outbreak of the coronavirus.
From one day to the next, our everyday life turned upside down; companies, schools, public places closed and everyone took refuge in their homes.
We were shocked and surprised, but the worst part is that the dead were not distant people, our loved ones and our neighbors.
Each day ended with a call to the elderly relatives in the hope of not hearing the word «fever». At this stage in Bergamo that word sounded almost like a death sentence. Hospitals collapsed and poor territorial medicine failed to help patients.
In all this climate of terror we arrived at the end of March and, like every year outside, spring was exploding in the open air. 2020 will be remembered as th year when the whole world stopped for a while, no airplanes in the sky, no cars on the streets, no trains, nobody walking along the roads, something we have never seen before and we wre not used to face or even imagin. We have seen whales swimming next to our coasts and jellyfish populate the crystal clear waters in the canals of Venice and deer descending from the mountains to the streets of the villages, a triumph of nature over man, the only positive thing of this 2020 that has put everyone to the test.
Unfortunately, despite the beautiful days, we were still all stuck at home, even if many started to resume work in smart working mode.
At the end of the spring it seemed that national lookdown had taken effect and our country was finally able to reopen.
We went back to our Company and things seemed to be back to normal.
Unfortunately, we had to give up around 20 planned business trips to assist and support our partners and dental fairs around the world.
Back to work we have sought the so lost normality, but the atmosphere was very strange, as if the entire planet had stopped and no one knew if and when everything would be as it was before.
As good Italians and people from Bergamo, however, we rolled up our sleeves and went back to work.
Fortunately, our distributors have also resumed their activities.
The world had changed, we could no longer hug, kiss, not even shake hands, but slowly we tried to find a new normality. Unfortunately, with autumn the infamous second wave arrived.
It was not as aggressive as the first, at least here in our surroundings, but again our work has stopped.
Now we are close to Christmas and although people want to meet and celebrate with the family, we have to resign ourselves to a cold Christmas without kisses and hugs.
We still want to be optimistic, leave this difficult year behind and prepare to face 2021 with new strength, enthusiasm, renewed energy and hopes.
Simple&smart team wants to renew to our partners and friends the hope that every day of the new year can be full of joy, opportunity, peace and serenity, and that we will soon forget about this pandemic that characterized the past year.