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 work for both B2B and B2C companies (slightly more commonly B2B).
- We work for established companies and for funded startups. For instance, a technical feasibility study or a DFM job typically starts from around US$5,000.
- If it’s an electro-mechanical product and it can be assembled in our facility (it still fits in a regular industrial lift), we can help you, and we work on a variety of specialty products, too.
- We accommodate a wide range of order sizes, regularly handling productions from 100pcs to 100kpcs per month.
We’re probably a good fit for each other if you satisfy most/all of these points:
- You have an understanding of the materials, components, and technologies needed to make your product a reality.
- You have done market research, gotten feedback from investors and target users, and understand your market and where your product fits into it.
- You have a plan for product development, transfer to production, production itself, and distribution.
- You have outside investment from professional investors.
- You have the budget to sustain the project.
- Your product design is complete, mature, and ready to go through prototyping and into production.
Common red flags which mean we’re not a good fit for each other yet 🚩
We can’t really provide value when a project is not mature enough yet. Typical red flags are when a potential client:
- Has not investigated or validated what technologies are a good fit for the product, and expects us to think of the whole solution for free (or for a low flat fee). This type of exploratory work is actually very valuable and requires experienced engineers' attention, so we are happy to do it only if the customer is willing to pay for all our work -- seldom below 2,000 USD.
- Does not have a clear idea of the target market, the typical user profile, and the distribution channel. The best companies have ways to figure all this out very early.
- Asks us questions such as "can you make this prototype (of new and complicated products, starting from nothing) in a few weeks?" or "once there is a prototype, you can go into mass production right away, right?". In other words, they have little idea about the whole process yet.
- Asks us to finance the project, to set up marketing & distribution, or pushes us into other unrealistic business models -- that's especially unrealistic if the "inventor" wants to have no 'skin in the game'.
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 500 and 1,500 USD for relatively simple products).
FAQs about who we work with
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. 25 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.
Based on our experience, projects that fail to make it to the market and to sustain a company financially, tend to have these traits:
- No market research beyond getting feedback from the founders’ personal networks, and few insights about the target market (competitors, main pain points of users, required warranty time, etc.). No structured survey of target users. No attempt at early market validation, for instance with advertising and a landing page.
- No overall plan for the development of the product, for the transfer to production, for the production itself, and for distribution. (Note: we can help refine the plan, and we have useful templates for that, but successful entrepreneurs usually do research or have previous experience, and they come up with an initial plan.)
- Since there is no plan, there is no budget. Again, we can help refine the budget, but there has to be an expectation that engineering work is not very cheap and that, apart from very simple products, it takes several rounds of prototyping to get the product design validated. Most of the products we make have taken a budget above 30,000 USD in prototyping, above 20,000 USD in tooling, and above 5,000 USD in other preparation work — and that’s before the costs of the first production run.
- Since there is no evidence of market demand or market traction, no plan, and no budget, there is usually no investor beyond friends & family on board.
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).
