Hi The Forum.
Disappointingly Holloid are going through a difficult period and this has affected the Chess for Schools project. There have been some fundamental problems with the board injection mould tools but the tools that produce the pieces have been production capable since June...
Unfortunately the issues at the company, not least of which include the resignation of technical, sales and production directors in the first week of August...have (as far as I'm aware (my last day of employment was 12th September tho' I'd been out of the business since early August) resulted in the company making only a few hundred sets of pieces.
I'm now a director of PDC limited and also Protomould Plastics and can categorically state that the industry sponsors I was working with @ Holloid (free material and equipment subsidies) still want to be associated with the project...though not with Holloid.
Holloid have invested heavily of their time and money in this project (about £25k hard cash and at least the same again in personnel terms) to get this far and it would seem heart-breaking for the project to fold - we'd gladly take on the manufacture of the sets at my new company if the tooling ever became available...
Anyway if anyone wants to talk to me directly I'm available on
[email protected] or
[email protected] - I don't visit the forum much (which judging by a lot of the commentary (and please forgive an ECF outsider's view!!) gives an image of the english chess organisation racked by in-fighting, politicking and general bitchiness!?!) so if you want any speedy response to queries concerning this post I'd come to me directly...
Best wishes to all @ ECF and here's to hoping Chess for Schools can get a re-launch
regards
Fergus Christie
Business Development Director, Protomould Limited
Director, PDC Limited