I had the great pleasure of chatting with Autodesk about the future of design & manufacturing, and a bit about what we’re doing here at BDH!
What a contrast to last years update.
BDH did rise from the ashes, resulting from a highly concentrated effort to level up. This included revamping our engagement structure to be more client focused than ever, onboarding new technology, working with new vendors, and moving office locations. We’ve delivered six end-to-end product development projects to happy clients and had our best financial year ever.
Thank you to our long-term clients who chose to continue to work with us, and to our new clients who chose to engage with us for their product design needs.
We’re going to continue delivering great working relationships and massive value in 2024.
It was such a pleasure designing & bringing this mega floss dispenser to life with Cocofloss. Now available for purchase by dental professionals!
I recently chatted with Shoutout LA Magazine. Read the article here to see some of my thoughts on building businesses in the technology space.
Our friends at Formlabs have put together this helpful video and guide to help you understand various 3D printing methods and available material properties. At BDH, we have FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling), SLA (Stereolithography), and SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) 3D printers.
All except one of our past clients started as a fixed fee, defined scope of work deal. Most of our fixed fee client projects have been in $20k - $150k range. Some of those clients with ongoing product development pipelines converted to a monthly retainer model.
I’m going to flip the deal structure a bit and start offering $20k - $30k monthly retainer deals to new clients. On our end, I’m hoping this increases conversion and reduces time spent selling so we can spend more time designing. On the clients end, this lowers the cost to engage our firm and gives freedom for changing needs at a defined product development capital expenditure.
We schedule projects and capacity in a way where our quality of work, timelines, and client relationships are at the highest level (just see what our past clients have to say). This will not change.
The terminology in design.. It’s a confusing world. “Product design,” “designer,” and “engineer” all get thrown around loosely with a wide array of intended definitions. The software and hardware worlds have been fighting to claim the terms & normalize them as their own. No doubt, good design translates across industries. A talented designer can excel in products, app design, websites, landscapes, architecture, etc. A great engineer can understand structures, programming, electronic devices, etc. That said, software and hardware design generally have quite different skillsets, workflows, and outputs.
So how do we define what we do? We help bring ideas to market in the hardware space. I suppose the proper terms are “industrial design” (another misnomer of sorts) & mechanical engineering. Product design is the logical, all encompassing description of what we do, but the software tech industry will fight me on that..
Time for my yearly year in review, and quite a year it’s been.
On a personal level, I had a skydiving crash last December and broke about everything you could break and still live. I was lucky beyond belief to not have any brain damage or be paralyzed. An incredible team of surgeons and doctors put me back together, but it was three months before I could even stand up again. In parallel with an ongoing physical recovery, managing the financial aspects of the accident, and just putting my life back together in general, I was running this business to the best of my ability. It’s incredible how draining being in constant pain is.. fighting for energy, fighting for creativity, and fighting just to get my brain & body out of atrophy became a months-long journey. Here we are almost a year later; finally I’m confident again with my knowledge of industry technology (it moves fast!), my ability to close deals, and most importantly, our ability as a company to continue to deliver stellar results.
The business didn’t die, but it is in a sense, rising from the ashes. When you stand still, the world moves on quiclkly. This year is in many ways, similar to our founding year. My mission is clear: to make it known that we’re here, and if your project is the right fit, we will deliver a service / product / cost value that is as good as you can get.
Lastly, I’ve received so much love and support from our clients and industry partners. To you guys & gals, thank you. You make it a pleasure to be here doing this.
Yearly update time! Another year of evolving and adapting. Covid has been eye-opening; now more than ever, I’m beyond thankful for our customers who continue to trust us to bring their ideas to market.
Speaking of such, one of the more recent challenges with transitioning products to volume production has been ensuring an uninturrepted tiered chain of suppliers. Our go-to contract manufacturers have been fantastic with material sourcing, even as supply chains crumble in most industries.
Overall, its been business as usual. I’m excited to continue working with our longstanding clients, as well as form new relationships with businesses doing cool things in the hardware space!
Looking forward to another productive & educative year!
- Sam