Your Design, Your Rules
Up until now, often the most affordable way to get a product to market was to find an offshore manufacturer to take on the design of your product. This type of engagement has been historically appealing for product developers, providing a cost-efficient, if not free, go-to-market plan. But like all “good things”, it often comes at a cost – typically an agreement that the manufacturer has exclusive rights to your design. Tariffs are changing this game quickly, with many companies coming to terms with the fact that they may own their intellectual property, but don’t actually own the design and manufacturing of their product. These companies are now unable to get the documentation required to onshore or move to a new manufacturer with lower tariff penalties.
What feels like a dead-end doesn’t have to be. The solution is as straightforward as working with a team of designers and engineers to deconstruct and document your product specs and give you freedom to choose your next manufacturing path. At Priority Designs, we have extensive equipment and experience in hard goods, soft goods, electronics, and firmware to deconstruct and document your design to ensure accuracy and quality at manufacturing. We have full in-house prototyping capabilities to generate a test build in addition to short production runs that give you confidence that your product remains unchanged, only now you hold the power to manufacture where you choose. We’ll even help you connect with a domestic manufacturer and support full specification hand-off to get you off and running again.
First you’ll need to answer the following questions:
1. Is it time to explore product design or feature upgrades?
This might be a great opportunity to ask yourself if it’s time for a design refresh. If you haven’t updated your product in a few years, the competition has caught up to your capabilities, or you simply need a refresh on new capabilities that might address the needs of your end user, it’s time to take a step back and assess the value of a new version. Partnering with our Design Research, Product and Brand Strategists and Industrial Design teams will level up your product experience when you have the opportunity to make it happen.
2. Do I want to maintain the design of my soft goods or integrated hard & soft goods product, but own it outright?
It’s time to partner with a company that has the specialized technical expertise to make this happen. Our soft goods technical experts will support you in taking back the documentation of your product through the following steps:
Review the product together, gathering all available details about materials and necessary construction processes.
Deconstruct the product down to individual pieces, noting construction details.
Create pattern pieces based on the production product.
Source materials as close to production as possible.
Document all discoveries in a tech pack including bill of materials, construction details, and patterns for a clear-cut handoff to the manufacturer.
Build out a grading chart based on current product sizes if needed.
Source a new manufacturer.
Deliver product documentation to client including tech pack, grading charts, production patterns. Everything is now yours!
Transfer construction knowledge to new manufacturer through a virtual or in person meeting to ensure communication from one technical expert to another (no game of telephone necessary)!
3. Do I want to maintain the design of my hard goods product, but own it outright?
Review the product together, gathering all available details about materials and necessary manufacturing processes.
Teardown the product assembly into individual components.
3D Scan the components to obtain highly accurate measurement data that can be read and modified using CAD software.
Identify materials, manufacturing processes, and tolerances for each component and subassembly.
Document critical fit, function, performance, safety, and strength requirements.
Create a new 2D and 3D CAD database, as well as bill-of-materials.
Build a prototype via additive manufacturing (3D printing), casting, machining, and/or other processes to confirm the reverse-engineered design matches the original production intent.
Test the prototype to verify that it meets its design specifications.
Transfer all relevant documentation to the new manufacturer.
Validate manufacturing outputs to ensure manufacturing processes have not impacted achievement of design specifications.
Where do I start?
No matter what type of product you have, or what state it’s in, our team is ready to meet with you and help you chart a path back to owning your full design documentation. Do this, and you’ll see a sudden smoothing of the road ahead. We engage in any part of the product development process and will flex to meet the demands of your project. Contact us for a discussion today!