At Agilian, our strengths and expertise are helping innovative hardware products (usually electro-mechanical products, but it does vary) get into production, and running productions on time, within budget, and at the expected quality level.
Some useful points to consider:
We’re probably a good fit for each other if you satisfy most/all of these points:
If you are planning to launch new products that have never been manufactured before and find yourself in the following situations, it’s likely that the time isn’t right for us to work together…yet.
We can’t really provide value when a project is not mature enough yet. Typical red flags are when a potential customer:
In such cases, it makes sense to join a community such as the Hardware Academy, or an incubator, before starting to talk to companies in Asia. Once the concept is a bit more mature, we can help with industrial design (we offer an “express” plan that costs between 800 and 1,500 USD for simple products).
Project minimums: Because our R&D team specializes in complex, ground-up product development, we work best with well-scoped projects. For projects requiring Agilian design services, we typically look for a minimum total design budget of $50,000 (only a portion of this needs to be spent with us). For projects already designed elsewhere, we can support you with a DFM review starting at $1,000.
Most products we work on include electronic features.
They often present multiple challenges, many of which cannot be foreseen in advance since the products are “new to the world” (in other words, there is no identical product to learn from).
What does all this imply?
Every project necessitates a lot of attention from our management. In the first years of our existence, we worked very hard to help customers who came with a low budget. We worked with many entrepreneurs who were trying to launch their product for the first time, and it felt great… until we found it was not workable from a business standpoint.
What was the problem?
At one point we went up to more than 80 different projects. We hired more than 30 project managers because there was so much work involved just in planning and tracking what to do. We worked hard on our processes, we hired a lot of support staff. 35 R&D engineers worked around the clock. Our managers became extremely busy.
However, we noticed that most of these small projects ‘died’ at one point.
The customers had prototypes in hand, but they failed to raise enough funding. Or they got some funding to pay for tooling and for a small production run, but they then lacked enough for marketing and distribution. Or they found, after spending time and money, that they could not sell their product as easily as they had assumed.
What did we learn from this?
We noticed clear patterns. Certain types of projects are more likely to be successful. And we want to spend all our attention, and bring all our experience, on those projects because they are more interesting and fulfilling at every level for both you and us.
So, we work only on projects that are relatively mature and that are somewhat likely to be successful.
Topic | Customer traits for a… | |
productive relationship | difficult relationship | |
Involvement | Researched technologies etc. | Expects all done for them |
Team member dedicated time | No regular team time | |
Funding | Has a plan & advisor | Limited budget, uncertain funds |
Market | Validated pain points, got evidence | No validation, waits for prototypes |
Approach | Understands uncertainty, patient | Impatient, pushes on delays |
Assists in solving problems | Complains, seeks free work | |
Communication | Clear, structured, to the point | Long emails; escalates to CEO |
Topic | Customer traits for a… | |
productive relationship | difficult relationship | |
Understanding | Values NPI process | Wants to skip steps |
Involvement | Team member dedicated time | No regular team time |
On-site for pilot runs | Remote only, expects fast approvals | |
Funding | Sufficient for full project | Insufficient and no strong plan |
Market | Started to pre-sell product | No sales, no traction |
Approach | Assists in solving problems | Complains, seeks free work |
Communication | Clear, structured, to the point | Long emails, escalates to CEO |
Based on our experience, projects that fail to make it to the market and to sustain a company financially, tend to have these traits:
For all these reasons, we tend to ask a lot of questions when someone reaches out to us for prototyping a new product. Not surprisingly, the more likely the product is to be successful, the more eager we are to work on it!
Congratulations! You have already done a lot of the work.
Here are two pieces of advice:
A. Don’t wait until the very last “look like, work like” prototype — you need to start doing DFM reviews relatively early. You will probably have adjustments to make in order to ensure the product is manufacturable at the right cost & quality. The later you start to consider DFM, the deeper and more painful the adjustments may have to be. Please contact us. We have a lot of experience with DFM.
B. Make sure to keep some timing and some budget for the process development & validation. In certain projects, the amount of work to get from prototype to production is as high as that of going from idea to prototype…
Yes, we can and we’re very interested in talking to you about your situation. Please contact us so we can have a discussion.
Oh, and make sure to prepare adequately for the transfer (we have written a detailed guide on how to switch from one supplier to another).
Got questions about Agilian?
Learn more about us and how we can help you!
