BreezeBlog

First the good news. After many months of refining our designs, vetting which components we would use, integrating the PCB with the fan housing we finally have a complete version of the major part of our product. We plugged it into the mains last night, pressed the "ON/OFF" button and it worked. Maybe "breeze" is a little bit of an understatement as Jill could feel its effect from the other side of the room. This was quite an emotional moment for us. Finally something we could use in exactly the same way our customers would experience the product.

Well done to all at CorinTech and BEC Group. You're stars.

Less good news was a component that arrived from the Far East this week. Frankly the quality was not fit for purpose - yes, it worked, but the finish showed poor workmanship, e.g. seams fraying and worse.

One of our military advisors explained the kind of rough handling our product might expect in the field (pretty much what a toddler could achieve in 5 minutes, if you're interested!). So we did exactly that to this component. The component failed in about 1 hour.

So, we could keep investigating sourcing this component from the Far East, but quality control in production batches would always be a concern. Take for example one of our neighbours who sources her products from China. She managed to get her plastics tool made and a first batch made to the standard she needed. After selling these she re-ordered another 5000 items (hey, all they had to do was produce exactly what they'd done originally). Months later the re-ordered items had not appeared but half a dozen samples did - warped and made from a different material. Failure to fullfill orders was the result.

What we want to achieve in our business is timely delivery to customers and consistent high quality of products.

We believe that the key to achieving this is through local supply, where potential problems can be discussed face-to-face. So, this looks like one more component in our product that will be Made in Britain.

This issue will obviously impact on the launch date. August doesn't now look feasible. But the positive thing that has come out of investigating Far Eastern sourcing at the pre-production stage is that we haven't made expensive mistakes which would have affected our customers.

So, sorry for the delay, but quality is what we stand for.

Andy & Jill