A Trusted UK Supplier Of ESD Control Products Since 1986
As we know, the year of 2020 was an eventful and devastating time for us all. Many businesses have suffered from the consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic and most are still facing challenges to this day. During this chaotic period, the majority of businesses, including Bondline, were informed to appoint their employees to work from home where possible. While this was straightforward for many businesses, it was proving to be a challenge for Bondline – working from home was simply not possible for all staff members. Bondline’s staff load was reduced for almost half a year and put onto furlough which made it even more challenging. Moving forward a year later into 2021, our employees had fully returned back to work and sales were starting to increase. Despite how the Coronavirus was, and still is, dominating our lives and the small mishaps along the way, 2021 has been a better year for us.
As well as navigating through Brexit and the pandemic, the electronics manufacturing industry have also experienced a component shortage this year. In effect, many businesses had to quickly adapt by changing internal processes and also coping with the strain imposed on the global supply chain. Despite the uncertainties, electronic manufacturing remains as one of the UK’s most exciting industries – with an increasingly growing demand in electric vehicles, product miniaturisation, and advances in medical and laboratory equipment. While components have become more tedious to acquire due to the shortage, it has been more important than ever to protect existing components from static damage. Due to this, an ESD control area and static control equipment have been essential solutions to eliminate / reduce static damage for many businesses – saving precious time and money in such a difficult sourcing period.
At the beginning of the year, Brexit came into affect at Bondline which brought some issues along the way. With new processes and solutions to consider, it had been challenging to get everything underway in time to comply with the latest regulations. Despite the difficulties, we were able to promptly get underway with our new processes and solutions relating to Brexit, ensuring all of our customers we were Brexit ready and were aware of our new operating systems by February. Several of our new processes and solutions included:
To find more information on this, you can read our Brexit blog post here.
To this date, we are still using these processes and solutions which have been proven to be successful as of yet. Looking forward in time, we will be ready to prepare for any new changes in regulations to ensure we are in compliance to all legislations and rules to come.
Along with the pandemic, this year was the year of our 35th anniversary. We’ve had a successful year commemorating 35 years of Bondline, reflecting back on our nostalgic images and looking back on our history over the years. As most of you will have seen on our website and social media channels, we have been sharing lots of nostalgic content and milestones throughout the year. In particular, our 35th anniversary competition was a success! We gathered some excellent responses from many of our customers through the survey and received some helpful improvements which we will work on implementing this year and into the next. On top of this, we also reached some fantastic company milestones:
Now, as it’s coming to the end of our 35th year, we’d like to round up with a MASSIVE thank you to all our employees, customers, suppliers and distributors for helping us get to where we are today! We hope you’ve enjoyed our 35th content this year just as much as we’ve enjoyed celebrating it! Here’s to the years ahead!
In addition to our 35th year anniversary celebrations, we wanted to do something special and heartfelt to commemorate this achievement. This year, we chose to donate to several charities which are close to our heart, including local charity and dog rescue SNDogs, Macmillan, Prospect Hospice and Dementia UK. As each of these charities meant so much to us and have all personally helped members of the Bondline team in some way, we thought it would be great to give back to them.
You can read all about it here – Bondline Donates To Charities Close To Their Heart | Blog | Bondline.
While this year has been filled with cheers for our 35 year achievement, it has also been an emotional time with the retirement of our past employee, Alison Carter. After working over 23 years at Bondline, our wonderful team member Alison Carter (Distribution Sales) retired this October. It has been an absolute pleasure working with Alison over the years and we’ve made many fantastic memories during this time. Ali will be dearly missed by us and many of the customers she dealt with on a day-to-day basis. To celebrate Ali’s retirement and wish her well, we set-up a surprise retirement display in the office and held a celebration party at the Tipi Tapas restaurant in Cricklade.
Despite the retirement of Ali, we were also excited to greet our new team member Mandy to the Bondline team – welcome Mandy! Mandy will be taking over from Ali’s role of Distribution Sales and is currently undertaking key training. We’re super happy that Mandy is a part of the team and we look forward to the many years to come with her!
With lockdown pressures and the pandemic still lingering, Productronica seemed unlikely to go ahead this year. However, after a long anticipated wait of over 2 years, we were fortunately able to attend Productronica during November 2021 – and we were so pleased we could attend! Darren Buckett, Sales Manager at Bondline, attended the Productronica event in Munich – the world’s leading trade fair for electronics development and production. Darren was able to experience and discover many great innovations in the electronics industry, visit numerous exhibitions and hear exciting announcements. It was a busy couple of days, although a great opportunity to meet people and see products in-person again. Darren found it to be a fantastic and insightful experience and looks forward attending again in the years to come.
One particular area we have been working on this year is the improvement of our LinkedIn page’s following amount. After putting in a lot of effort into our marketing this year, we have managed to achieve almost a 200% increase in followers this year alone which is a fantastic result to see! Going into the New Year, we hope to improve on this by at least 15%, enabling us to connect to more of our customers and further reach out to our market.
At Bondline, we are continuously innovating and researching ways to develop our products and services. One of the ways we are doing this is through the investigation of what our market needs in terms of products and services in order to help them improve their operations. Next year, we hope to introduce some new, exciting products and services that can help with a variety of solutions for our customers. We shall update you on our latest developments through our blog, social media channels and newsletters – so keep an eye out!
Have your say – Is there anything in particular you would like to see from us? Whether it’s a new product or service, please let us know by contacting us.
Next year, we have lots more in store to come which we’re excited to share with you! We hope to have another prosperous year with increased sales and demand, while increasing stock levels and introducing new, exciting products and services into the market. We look forward to another great year with the hopes that the pandemic will improve and more in-person events will return. In addition, get ready for more promotions, competitions and exciting content next year – sign up to our email newsletter to ensure you don’t miss anything! It’s been great reflecting back on this year within the article ‘Bondline’s Year In Review 2021’ and we hope you have found it insightful as well.
We look forward to seeing you in the New Year and we hope you have a revitalising break, enjoying all the festive fun – after all it is well deserved!
(Have you checked our Christmas opening hours? See our Christmas Update here!)
All the best,
Bondline Electronics
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