February 13, 2025

PMD Way Update - February 2025

Happy February!

And "Happy Lunar New Year" for those who celebrate this holiday in their location. This year is the year of the wood snake. Can't say that I'm a fan of snakes but there you go.

Here in Australia we have lots of snakes, and if you don't see them at first - they might shed their skin and move on as one had done in our yard yesterday:

No matter your preference to snakes, we wish you all health and prosperity in the coming times.

Lunar New Year also presented, as always, annual challenges for us as a business due to all the people taking care of logistics and shipments going on holiday for periods of one to three weeks from the end of January. This caused some delayed shipments, however everything has been caught up and all orders placed during the holiday are on their way.

Thank you for your patience during that time. As always, we encourage new visitors to review our shipping page to understand timeframes and so on.

Another challenge was discovered one late evening earlier last week when the US Government decided to stop accepting parcels from Hong Kong and China...

That would have cut off about half of our revenue if the suspension had been maintained. Thankfully, the block was lifted an hour later and we're shipping to the USA as normal again.

This challenge has given us motivation to consider what the future could hold with regards to shipping to the United States. We're currently researching and testing solutions in case this suspension appears again. Interesting times ahead.

Moving on to more positive things, we're currently working through our regular store "sweep". This is a manual process that involves updating products - including price, our delivery partners and also removing older products that are no longer available.

So far we have found that a lot of 8-bit microcontroller products are dropping in price, along with those using Espressif microcontrollers. This sweep process can take a few months, so if you're watching something and are curious if we can do better, email support@pmdway.com to find out.

Furthermore, we're upgrading an increasing number of shipments to a better delivery partner which is achieving delivery times of less than ten days to some markets. All of this is to give you better value where we can, and a better purchasing and delivery experience.

Also a big "thank you" to our customers in Australia, who are taking advantage of our bulk consolidation services. You can order a large variety of things, which are then checked and repackaged at our Australian office and delivered by Express Post. This saves the hassle of import expenses, and you receive a full warranty and tax invoice.

This is great for schools, unis, clubs, or those who need a lot of something and want one single point of contact in Australia for customer service.

We also offer this service to customers in other countries who require goods sent to an agent such as in Singapore. The only condition is that you pay via TT.

As you can imagine, we're always working on how to improve the experience for you, our customers. And of course your feedback is always welcome, simply email support@pmdway.com.

Until next time,