BreezeBlog

With so much of our product being manufactured in Britain we'd been looking around for a "Made in Britain" logo. Well, a Google search wasn't encouraging.

Possibly a reflection of the almost knee-jerk move in recent years to manufacture in the Far East? Try sourcing some components from anywhere but the Far East and you'll struggle.

But where there is a choice - components exclusive to our product - we've always chosen to manufacture in Britain. As I reported in August the downside of Far East sourcing is that the quality is sometimes not there. Forget the "product miles" for a second. From a purely practical point of view surely it makes sense to be able to visit your suppliers if they are based just a few miles down the road!

We were, therefore, pleased to learn about and be accepted as members of an organisation called British Made for Quality.

Call me old fashioned. Or maybe it was nearly 20 years working in the UK MoD on behalf of servicemen. Perhaps its the photo we keep in the office of my brother at "The Palace" receiving his OBE. Or maybe Simon Bates just played "Jerusalem" on ClassicFM. But there's something that just "feels right" about being able to put a Red, White and Blue logo on to our product.

Following on from the recent demos at the National Defense University and at The Pentagon, we're pleased to move on to some extensive field testing in SE Asia. As I write this post one of our prototypes is somewhere between Anchorage and Bangkok in the hold of a FedEx plane winging it's way to our field tester (ok, my cousin Nicki) who is going to be putting the cooler through its paces in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam over the coming months.

From the photos I've seen so far of this expedition there seems to have been an emphasis on white sand beaches, sarongs and snorkelling off dive boats. With the only variation in the December weather here in Alton being from vertical to horizontal rain I've a mind to block further emails from the pair of them - far too depressing. However, as they're both experienced backpackers it'll be interesting to hear their comments on the cooler.

Meanwhile "back at the ranch" I've got to get back to putting the finishing touches to some engineering drawings of the product...

As we look back at 2007 we'd like to send our personal thanks to all those who have been involved throughout the year in developing the SleepBreeze personal cooler. We very much look forward to working with you in 2008 and seeing all our efforts come to fruition!

We'd also like to take this opportunity to wish all the visitors to our Blog and the SleepBreeze Ltd website a very happy and peaceful Christmas.

with our best wishes,
Jill and Andy