So the manufacturing muse has hit you. That “ah-ha!” moment where you’ve envisioned an undeniably great invention or product that’s sure to be a success. Now, all that’s left to do is tease the dream out of your mind and get it mass-produced.
For many would-be inventors, this is the chasm that separates the haves from the have nots.
Information such as figuring out how to design a prototype, to finding the right manufacturing partner, and knowing the necessary steps along the way are all essential to that dream’s success.
To better understand the challenges, CustomFab USA speaks with Jake Van Vorhis, the Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of the Airo Collective. He and Steve Schmidt (CEO, Founder, and Inventor) created the Stealth Wallet, the world’s thinnest and strongest wallet. The company launched its product as a Kickstarter in 2019, and since then has sold over $620,000 worth of wallets.
Before Stealth Wallet, Jake explains they’d never designed a mass-produced soft-goods product.
“The biggest challenge to us was our lack of resources,” says Jake. “We didn't have any big-name investors or large checkbooks backing us, so we had to be super scrappy, and hand-make a lot of prototypes ourselves.”
In true entrepreneurial fashion, the team painstakingly created a prototype using borrowed equipment and a friend’s t-shirt printing shop. They would wait until the store closed to begin working, often late into the night, as they labored to create a functional prototype. “We are not skilled artisans!” admits Jake.
Even with their wallet in hand, the team knew that they faced significant challenges in bringing their prototype into mass-production. “We had to get all that we lacked,” remembers Jake.
Despite having managed to obtain the capital necessary to produce the first run of wallets, Jake and Steve realized that it would be essential to find a partner factory who believed in their vision. The partner they chose would need to help them go from an R&D prototype to the final manufacturing build process, streamlining its production steps.
“We needed…more voices around the table to brainstorm unique approaches to the specific problems we faced in certain build steps,” Jake says.
Entrepreneurs often look both at home and abroad for factories that can bring their vision to reality. Jake said they decided to go with a manufacturer in the United States in order to avoid language barriers, reduce time and travel costs, simplify quality control, and support American jobs. “The biggest disadvantage was cost,” Jake says. “But we were happy to make the tradeoff for a partner factory we could trust. And we worked hard to get the domestic cost down as much as possible as well.”
After finding a manufacturing partner, the pair worked with the factory’s R&D and tooling team, spending about four months nailing down the perfect production method. As Jake recalls, “A big challenge was processing how each individual step in making our handmade prototypes would translate into highly accurate production steps that could be repeated thousands of times without error.”
The team knew that the manufacturing process was key to maximizing the performance of their design. “The manufacturing techniques and machine capabilities would be what determined whether or not we could physically make what we wanted, and for the price we needed, so people could afford it,” Jake explains.
Their manufacturing partner worked creatively to keep Airo Collective’s costs down. The factory’s tooling manager came up with a tool change that not only saved time and money but simultaneously increased accuracy. “The tool was way better than the best we had come up with when we were hand-making our prototypes,” Jake marvels.
Despite a successful first run, Jake admits that there were a few hiccups, which occurred while they were working with smaller, more inexperienced manufacturers before entering into a relationship with an industrial one. The most significant hazards to be aware of, Jake warned, is that smaller manufacturers lack attention to detail, have poorly-trained workforces, and missed deadlines.
“In doing a first run with any factory, one step we learned from the problems we faced is to make absolutely certain to get samples from every step of the process and ensure every instruction is followed to a tee before production continues in bulk,” Jake explains.
One of the best pieces of advice Jake has for fellow innovators who are looking to create there dream product for mass production?...
“Partner with a great factory from the start, and design with the user and manufacturing process in mind.”