April 2020, the force of Covid 19 shook the entire world, and lockdowns began, we started seeing and experiencing firsthand the effects of being locked down on ourselves and friends and family. Our kids felt like lions in a zoo!
As a sport driven family, with no freedom to go for a run or a family walk, and with our running event and our running holiday business impacted heavily by the covid restrictions we sat on our kitchen table finding ways not only to make our lives and our 3 children’s lives more bearable but also the lives of people within our network what “we thought” would be a few hundred people at the most.
How wrong could we be?
Participants
Countries
In May 2020 we launched our first Virtual Lands End to John O Groats Event to help motivate people who were struggling during the lockdown. We wanted something a little more than your everyday virtual event so we decided on a virtual event you could track yourself on a map and you receive postcards along the route which would give you the incentive and motivation to carry on.
This attracted a couple of hundred people and we were thrilled!
We took our kids camping for the weekend as it was the only thing we were allowed to do during this time, little did we know chaos was erupting and in one weekend our Lands End to John O Groats 3rd Cohort had received over 2000 entries! We came home to online chaos… Our feelings were a mixture of excitement and fear and come launch day, almost 3000 people excitedly waiting to get started on their journey started to log their mileage… our system crashed, blew up… IT WENT KABOOM!
For the following 5 days we worked around the clock with a team of developers to quickly rebuild our system so it was able to handle the new volume and more. We call these the “Peanuts and redbull days” because Tori worked around the clock for 5 days living off peanuts and redbull!
It took us some time to get the right team and now we’ve found it we’re not letting go. Each person on our team brings great value and laughter to the team. We are now expanding into other areas and our team keeps on growing.
Tori is the CEO | Co Founder of End to End. Obsessed with maximising the potential of physical movement and community. She spearheads daily growth initiatives and partners with every team to refine strategy, drive innovation, and deliver exceptional results.
Nathan is Co-Founder of End to End, collaborating with both our Sales & Marketing and Corporate teams. An elite ultra-distance athlete, he represents Great Britain on the 24-Hour squad and Wales in 100 KM competition.
Meet Ann, the heart of our fulfillment team! She pours love into each hand-packed medal and T-shirt, and if you’ve taken on more than one challenge, she’ll know your name and the exact challenges you’ve conquered.
Stuart is our Fulfillment Executive, ensuring every medal and T-shirt reaches participants on schedule. He oversees inventory management and champions rigorous quality assurance at every step.
Milos serves as our Administrator and Community Manager, providing support to every participant and overseeing our 20,000-member Facebook group. His expertise keeps operations running smoothly—and he does it all with a welcoming smile.
Sarah is our Corporate Wellbeing Coordinator, expert at activating workforces. She’s guided thousands of companies through tailored workplace challenges and delivers the perfect program to boost your team’s health and engagement.
Meet Deepak, our Head Developer! He’s the tech wizard behind every challenge, building, fine-tuning, and troubleshooting to keep things running like clockwork.
As Junior Developer, Sean collaborates on every stage of our challenge platforms, from architecture and coding to deployment and troubleshooting. His work keeps our corporate and charity partners’ events running smoothly and seamlessly.
Sheryl is our Social Media Executive, crafting and executing strategies that grow engagement and amplify our brand across platforms.
Jo is a key member of both our Marketing and Corporate Wellness teams, known for her out-of-the-box ideas and exceptional creativity. Her innovative approach consistently drives fresh, engaging campaigns.
Julia is our Accounts Executive, overseeing all payments and ensuring invoices are processed and settled on schedule.
When we started on this journey the plan was 1 route, 1 challenge, 1 year. We’ve now got 28 virtual Challenges from a range of routes from all over the world and who knows where this journey will take us next. We love every minute of creating these challenges and seeing people achieve great things.
We help to fight hunger by donating meals to those in need through food banks, charity partners, homeless shelters and more when a participant reaches 50% on any of our challenges.
At 20%, 40%, 60% and 80% of everyone's challenge trees are donated on behalf of each participant to contribute to a more sustainable future. Totalling 4 trees per finisher.
We help charities fundraise through our charity partner program, which gives them access to donations from signups and money raised through fundraisers.
We pride ourselves on being able to give back to our comminuty, we are grateful for what we have and believe that being kind can make a huge difference in this world.
Every school from around the world get's access to Free School Challenges in our education program. Children are our future let's make them fit and healthy in both mind and body and help tackle child obesity.
We pride ourselves on being able to donate to various charities each year and not just one, we support charities close to us and more by donating throughout the year for various causes.
Giving back is one of our most important values, we are grateful for what we have and believe that being kind can make a huge difference in this world.
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