VentureTech was previously known as Solid Design and consulting, the 1st Pro Engineer certified engineering provider in the US North Pacific back in 1994.
One of our high profile customers was a Swiss hockey skate manufacturer setting up operations in Canada: Graf. Their hockey skate newest design was a 3 post version, with the looks of a Roman warship, turning out to be a stealth skate as we called it, for its comparatively silent approach on the ice surprising any opponent player.
Graf contacted a famous design firm in California and got quoted a lofty US$200,000 for the design of the skate plastic connecting piece. Graf ended up hiring a sculpture artist and us (now Venturetech) to do manual and digital sculpting for a fraction of that price. You can still see this high end skate in most hockey equipment stores today.
Most of our customers know very well where they want to go, they understand their markets, see the opportunities and have very good feel for design. During every project we go through various digital iterations originated from simple mockups for usability studies, also performed by the clients.
And we take it one step further: we ensure meeting aggressive cost targets as well. Our design and engineering process is therefore a blend of aesthetic design and engineering, with product and tooling (budget) costs in mind.
And these cost targets don’t necessarily mean limiting the design, one of my clients showed her first injection molded presentable product which resulted in an immediate large order. Certain very innovative aspects of the design are in the process of being patented and we turned out to be as efficient on engineering budget (probably better) than with the Graf ‘Stealth’ Skate.