What all does Nordic walking, Nova Scotia encompass, as far as your business model?
We sell the poles directly. We also sell them through, sub-distributors and instructors. We also have retail outlets that we, supply the poles to around, Atlantic Canada. As you know, we're talking to four provinces and we've got people, working in the north, their own little Nordic businesses, right across right across all four Atlantic provinces.
Esther, does the online sales too. And we teach classes? and we teach other people to teach, classes because there is a technique it's a simple, technique, but there is a technique so that you're really engaging all those upper body muscles in the safest way and the most effective way possible.
Yep. Before the pandemic, we were, traveling a fair amount around Nova Scotia and the other, maritime provinces, and, teaching classes of up to 30 people at a time, how to do the proper technique. It takes about an hour and a half. And by the time we leave, most people have picked it up.
It's not a hard technique. Pretty much, if you can walk, you can Nordic walk, but, hopefully get back to that again in the late summer or the fall, depending on how things go, where we are.
So you touched on that pandemic a little bit. , how you expected it to impact your business, but how has it actually?
We've had the best. 12 months that we've had in 12 years. Like I said before, we, because we know that are going out and teaching and talking to people face to face was, was really what drove a lot of sales. We figured once we weren't allowed to do that, that we were dead in the water until it was over.
But what happens is that, people still wanted to get out and exercise and the gyms were closed and the group group activities were weren't happening so they could get out and walk. Nordic walking just gave them that extra workout. It's become very popular with seniors. Even when, things started to open up between the lockdowns, a lot of the older demographic, were afraid to go back to the gym because.
That's where a lot of transmission was happening. They weren't confident about it. So they, they wanted to be able to go out with maybe one friend one relative or on their own. And so that's driven the online sales. Christmas last year was, pretty much insane. Yeah, I think the, the other thing that was maybe more good luck than good management, but I think we saw the potential coming was that we were ready for the digital world. We were ready. We have an excellent website and, the person who manages the website for us does an amazing job. Uh, we were familiar and knew how to produce our own videos and do our own instruction.
