Jostens says it is well-positioned for 2021
“We delivered on yearbooks and graduations for millions and millions of students and tens of thousands of schools last year and we are innovating and investing to bring more support and better experiences to schools and students in 2021 during COVID and beyond,” said Michael Burgess, CEO, Jostens. “We were focused on how we could help schools solve their challenges during COVID and we made all of our virtual social and emotional learning content available free to all schools last year. We also provided free resources to our schools for virtual graduations, free tools for digital signing of yearbooks, and free virtual conferences for educators on health, safety, and student equity with extraordinary engagement from educators.”
The company’s CFO added Jostens has the financial resources to ride out the pandemic.
“We are in a strong financial position to give our partners confidence we will be able to deliver,” said David Huls, CFO and COO, Jostens. “In fact, with more than $150 million of cash on hand and credit facility availability at this time, we have ample capital to support our efforts through the coming year…We will continue to commit additional capital in the future to serve our customers through this growth and innovation. We are well-positioned to partner with schools to meet the challenges they face in 2021.”
The company said it launched several initiatives in response to COVID-19 that helped retain and support the tradition of school pictures and yearbooks, including the Finishing Strong video series for high school students and staff, a new Virtual Grad Fair experience for colleges, and Yearbook +, Jostens’ proprietary digital enhancement to the traditional printed yearbook.
“We are pleased to have recently launched Yearbook + to allow all students to tell their own story in the yearbook experience and just last month we released our newest enhancement allowing students to upload their portrait picture. This new feature helps our schools overcome the challenges COVID has presented getting student portraits,” said Tammy Whitaker, general manager and vice president, yearbook division. “It is the most inclusive yearbook experience ever, and our new Layout Pro tool and YRBK Express tools for easily and virtually creating these historic yearbooks is available to all of our approximately 20,000 schools.”