Why Should I Hire a Product Design Firm?

Outsource or In-House

Whether you are an established company looking to expand into new markets or an entrepreneur who has a great idea to bring to market, one of the biggest questions you have is should I hire an internal team or hire a professional product design firm?

Hopefully this article will outline some of the benefits of hiring a product development firm over building an in-house team! I would like to go out on a limb and say that hiring a design firm will almost always save you money and will make your product launch smoother with fewer surprises along the way.

Let’s face it launching a product, especially an electronic product can be very difficult! And one of the hardest parts will be deciding on what size budget you need to bring your product to market and what experience you will need to hire.

Product Design Firms Bring Experience & Expertise

Finding hardware, mechanical and software engineers may look like an easy task; however, it’s not just about finding people who can build the prototype it’s about building a team that will consider the cost and complexity the project will take when scaling for mass production! The number one reason that startups and hardware product failure is due to a lack of planning or an insufficient budget, this is where a product development company can provide a necessary investment. Many firms offer what’s called an Ideation Package, this package includes a Market Requirement Document (MRD), Product Specification Document (PSD) and a project road map. These look at the technological feasibility of the project and can provide you with a road map and budget outlining the expenses that will be incurred during the project that are usually forgotten by a new startup team. Whether you are looking at building your own startup team or working with a design firm it is recommended to spend a couple thousand dollars to get some proper planning done, as this is a cost that can define the success or failure of your project.

Expertise in designing parts for injection molding can save you a lot of money when it comes time to get the mold tooled! Furthermore, many electronic will use component chips, i.e. Bluetooth, LoRa, Wi-Fi. Now it is easiest to use the brand name western products but when it comes to scaling your product if you didn’t design the firmware around the Chinese chip that you will be using you can cause a lot of rework when it comes to scaling for mass production.

Product Design Firms are Cost Effective

Hiring a product development team, finding someone to manage the project, coordinating the manufacturing, analyzing the market, learning and developing the skills required to bring a product to market are just some of the obstacles you will face when you decide to make your own product design team.

The first barrier to making a cost-effective product development team is the recruitment process and training any necessary skills when you bring that team together. So how can product development companies do it so much more cost effectively? For starters, they have a dedicated team who has learnt and developed working on other projects before yours, and second, a product development takes many different types of talent, industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, supply chain experts, quality control and regulatory personnel. With all these teams members its hard to build a team that has the right expertise at the right time, the industrial design like the other stages of development only lasts for a couple months so it makes little sense to hire a full-time team but it’s difficult to get the commitment and dedication needed hiring contractors. For these reasons and many more we suggest strongly that you consider working instead with a product development company if you still are unclear and need some more clarification please don’t hesitate to set up a 30-minute consultation for free!

They Have Developed Processes

When most companies try to jump into product development one word would describe it best, chaos. Putting out fires becomes a way of life and the product ends up with one delay after the other. The only effective firefighter is a properly built and tested process. Product development companies have years of experience working with and testing their processes to assure nothing gets missed and quality is built into the overall design.

About the Author

Ventrify is a product design and manufacture firm that helps entrepreneurs bring product ideas from concept to market. We take in fledgling ideas and bring them through our iterative design process to create products our clients can be proud of. Then, we work with manufacturing facilities across the world to bring our clients the highest quality products at competitive prices.

If you are unsure about outsourcing, feel free to reach out to the Ventrify team through Facebook, LinkedIn, or our Website. We love talking product development and can give you our unbiased 2 cents!