Tecbridge Circuits

Christmas Newsletter 2016-2017

		We would like to thank you most sincerely for your custom, encouragement and support during 2016. Despite challenging trading conditions and uncertainties it has been pleasing to watch steady organic growth from our loyal customers throughout the year. Our biggest development has been relocating our logistics hub from our base in Ascot to a new location in Croydon where all major courier companies lie within a 2 mile radius. This has enabled us to more easily and efficiently handle surges in customer shipments and fast-track orders which are an ever present challenge. Despite strong headwinds in terms of adverse exchange rates, business has held up very well. I am pleased to close the year with some good news - tooling charges from our Fairfield factory are down some 20-25% effective immediately. This has already been incorporated into our on-line price calculator. At the time of writing, the value of Sterling is starting to recover - let us all hope this trend continues steadily - turbulence in foreighn exchange rates helps nobody. From all of us at Tecbridge Circuits , we wish you a very hearty Christmas and prosperous new year.

Christmas and New Year Opening

Our published delivery times will be slightly longer during the Christmas and New Year period to take account of UK holidays, Courier disruption and Factory breaks.

Scoat and Fairfield factories will both operate normally through Christmas without a break. Both factories will close briefly at new year between 1st January and 3rd January. Courier services from our two factories in China will be disrupted owing to Christmas and New Year holidays in Western Europe.

It is a great idea to order PCB's just before Christmas so they are being manufactured whilst you enjoy the Christmas festivities. It is also a good idea to avoid the rush just before the start of the Chinese New Year holiday.

We will ship orders for next day delivery up to and including Wed 21st December for next day delivery 22nd December. We will re-commence shipping on Tuesday 3rd January for next day delivery on Wednesday 4th January.

Last order dates for delivery before Christmas:-

8 Working Days schedule Monday 12th December
11 Working Days schedule Thursday 8th December.

Expedited order options will continue to be available, however delivery schedules can be disrupted at this time of year due to weather and uncertainties of Courier performance.

If you plan to cut it fine in terms of last minute time-critical orders best call us for advce first before placing orders.

Our Sales and Technical Support functions will operate a partial service on all non-public holiday days throughout the Christmas and New Year period.

IMPORTANT - we will be performing major IT upgrades over this period PLEASE CONFIRM BY TELEPHONE WE HAVE RECEIVED ANY EMAILS SENT OVER CHRISTMAS.

Chinese New Year Holidays 2016

Much of the World's PCB manufacture is carried out in China and delivery timescales are likely to become extended for both European and Offshore factories alike.

According to the Chinese zodiac, this is the year of the rooster and our colleagues at both our offshore factories will be taking a well earned break.

Scoat and Fairfield factories have not yet formaly published their intended closure dates and the following is based on previous years practices.

The public holiday is between January 27th and February 2nd, however both factories are likely to close between 27th January and 5th February inclusive. Orders which have not been shipped from the factory before 23rd January are likely to be delayed by about 14 calendar days. Please allow extra time in the period running up to the Chinese New Year and also to allow extra time when the factories re-open. Both periods are likely to be exceptionally busy and it is not unknown for delays in cold-starting the factories after the shut down.

Key Dates

Factory	Last safe order date for 1-2 layer boards for delivery before Chinese New year
Scoat	Friday 13th January (12 working days service)
Fairfield	Tuesday 17th January (8 working days service)

Please allow longer times for multilayer PCB's and large orders > 1 sq meter.

At Tecbridge Circuits some of our staff will be taking vacation coincident with our factories shutdown resulting in a skeleton service between 24th and 31st January.

Shipments in transit but not held in areas affected by the Chinese New Year holiday will be delivered as normal.

Chinese New Year Timeline (last rev 6 Dec 16)

Our Business Strategy

We aim to supply our customers with the highest possible standards of product quality and service at the lowest possible cost.

Our PCB products come from factories with which we have established deep and close working relationships so we know we can always guarantee quality. We constantly work to improve our understanding of our manufacturing partner's processes and capabilities and learn how to communicate accurately and effectively with them. We process our customers designs here in UK to highlight and anticipate possible issues long before they cause problems at the factory or deliver unwanted surprises to our customers. We help our manufacturing partners by ensuring customers designs are presented in a consistent and complete way. In this way we are able to delivery the best quality and prices offshore manufacturing can offer whilst reducing the risk and hassles of working with offshore factories to negligible proportions.

Occasionally we may need to source manufacturing capacity from new factories to meet special technical requirements our core manufacturing partners cannot meet. In these circumstances, we always discuss the issues so our customers can properly evaluate the risks and benefits of working with us and a new but untried manufacturing resource to achieve a design objective.

We are practical electronic design engineers and understand not only bare PCB manufacturing but also PCB design issues such as designing for EMC, critical mixed signal design, power systems design etc. By looking at our customers designs critically we are often able to offer suggestions and advice which save unnecessary design spins which waste time and money.

Why not link to us?

We spend a lot of money on advertising each year and frankly we would prefer not to. You can help us keep our costs and prices low by helping us achieve a higher 'natural' ranking with key search engines.

If you have a blog or web site, contribute to forums, bulletin boards or even social networking sites visible to the major search engines, you can help by linking to us. All you need to do is mention the words PCB or Printed Circuit Board in your anchor text and include a hyperlink to our home page. If you value the experience you have had working with Tecbridge, a nice comment or two is always appreciated.

If you would like to link to us but you are unsure of the technicalities, please just give us a call.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. We wish you a very happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

 

Henry Gibson

Director
Tecbridge Ltd