Hi, I’m Paul Darley, and thanks for tuning into our January issue of Inside Darley. With all that is happening in Washington D.C and elsewhere around the country hopefully we as a country can learn from these experiences. Hopefully, we can all come together and put our best interests of our grand kids and future generations first and foremost. We as community leaders whether you are a fire chief, a veteran, a military leader, or a business leader hopefully we can reunite our country as we move forward.
There has been some very positive news coming out of Washington D.C, it is great to see the vaccines being put into play and I view us as a company as being in the top of the 6th inning in terms of our overall approach to the pandemic. Stock market hit new highs last week, that’s very positive news. Also, a very positive piece for our firefighters, the AFG and Safer grants were approved for 370 million dollars each so we have attached here for you a link where you can apply. The grant period is now open until February 12th, so we encourage you to get your applications in there very quickly.
Our company theme last year was “Stary Hungry and Humble,” we said that pre-covid and all the rest. We were really blessed on January 5th, 2021 when we received the largest order in our company’s history, we’ve attached a press release on that for you.
It’s a 33-Billion-dollar award from the DLA. It’s a 10-year contract with all options exercised and that amount is for 6 contractors of which we are an incumbent, so we are really looking forward to filling that. Last year alone we did about $500 million in sales under that contract, so we are continuing to add to our team and bring on new people. We are really excited to have that it is really a springboard for us. Our 2021 theme prior to getting that award and relative to Covid is “We’ve got this.” We are using Covid as a springboard for change at Darley.
I recently came across a quote from Vivian Greene, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” I’ll tell you as I look at our team, they really have done a spectacular job I’m so proud of them, and how we have been agile and navigated as a team in this new environment and serving our customers needs.
We’ve also attached a list of PPE inventory that we currently have in stock, available for immediate delivery from really credible and high-quality sources. Just in the past couple of months Darley has moved to our federal customers FEMA, HHS, and the DoD, one order for 4 million gowns, another one for 12 million N95 masks and countless gloves and other PPE. We have become a solid resource for covid PPE as we continue to work through this pandemic and beyond.
We certainly don’t have this all figured out and I have taken a lot of comfort over the last year and talking to other CEO groups and also McKinsey has been very involved with us. The next three attachments are from them. The first is the top 10 McKinsey articles this year. And two of the individual articles, one is called the CEO moment: Leadership for a new era, and the second is called, The next normal arrives: Trends that will define 2021-and beyond. Hopefully you can check that out.
As we start to get out and visit customers more, very cautiously and carefully, tradeshows hopefully will start happening again. The FDIC, perhaps you have seen the news, they plan on having their tradeshow take place August 22-24th. Interschutz has been a bit more conservative and pushed their show back to June 20-25 2022.
Thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley, if there is anything we can be doing to support you, we hope you reach out to us.
