start of the design process
Every new product starts with an idea. Discover how we can help you with our design process. From the initial contact up to production of your new product.
full or partial
We’ll walk you through the entire design process so you can get a sense of how it works. That doesn’t mean every project follows this exact path. Every project is different, which is why we’ll provide a quote tailored specifically to your situation.
Some clients appreciate our support from the initial idea through to production, while others have their own production capabilities and are primarily interested in developing new concepts or just creating an initial prototype.
initial contact
When you contact us, we will listen to your plans and try to find out if we could be the right partner for your project. Mostly we can give you already some early indications about how your specific design process will look like, lead times and budget for your project.
nda
If you like, we can send you a NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. This documents makes sure that everything we discuss will stay between us.
briefing
It is important for us to get a clear idea of your plans. Not only about the product itself, but also your plans for production, logistics and marketing. If you do not have structured plans yet, don’t worry, we will talk about it several times again during the project.
During a briefing meeting we will also discuss the product in more details, the market, competition and what makes your new product stand out.
We are happy to have you over in person in Amsterdam, but obviously an online meeting is great as well to discuss more details.
offer
After the briefing we can make a detailed quotation for you. This quotation describes the topics we discussed during the briefing and outlines the stages of the design process.
The quotation document also contains estimated lead times per design stage, budgets per design stage, general conditions, etc. Once signed, the quotation serves as a contract for the project.
For the first stages of the process we can give you fixed budgets, for the later stages only estimates are possible, as we do not know yet how the final concept will look like and which technical solutions we need to find.
This means that buying design services is very different from buying a car for instance. The stages of engineering, prototyping and production support are still very fuzzy in terms of technical solutions and what it will cost to develop. We will help to find the best route to a P1 prototype, but budget overruns do happen in product development.
IP
The full intellectual rights (IP) on the new products are always part of the contract. This means that after the project is finished you are the only and complete owner of the product design and can do with it as you please.
It is important to understand that many design firms do not have this policy, so if you would work with a different design firm, you might end up paying royalties to use the design.
next step
As soon as the quotation document is signed, we can start the project with a kick-off meeting.
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