Working with ProtoCAM!
One of the great things about starting a small business is meeting like-minded people! Below is a link to an article that ProtoCAM wrote regarding our experience working together. If you are like me, lessons are best learned in the "doing" of things... there are some things you just can't learn in school!
I hope you enjoy the insight into my thought process and consider them for any prototype work you may have in mind! They are, without bias, a great company to work with.
Here are some of the prototypes I developed with them while working towards my final product:
Below is a short snippet from their piece to hopefully coerce you into checking out the full article (link at the bottom)!
A Costly Decision
Foster recalls the difficult consideration he faced in choosing between investing his savings in a higher degree, or in pursuing his inspiration. “As I got to looking into the M.B.A. process… it’s just so expensive,” Foster says. As he reviewed the numbers, he realized that creating and manufacturing the Snap Shot Flask wasn’t likely to cost him as much as attending a 2-year business school would.
His final decision was made when Foster recalled how he had developed what he considers his best skill while working in the pharmaceutical wholesale industry: public speaking. “[Public speaking] wasn’t something that I formally learned in undergraduate business classes. Speaking to a tired group of employees and getting them to push through a 13-hour shift to get deliveries out to hospitals isn’t something you can learn in school,” Foster says.
Foster ultimately decided that he could acquire the same wide range of knowledge—about marketing, packaging, manufacturing, intellectual property, and more—that he’d expected to learn in business school by bringing his invention to life instead.
A major takeaway (prompted by a question from a friend of mine) regarding the experience of bringing a product to market was learning the gap between the “if you can dream it, you can build it” ability in prototyping and the limitations of molds used for manufacturing. Little tips and tricks the manufacturers and ProtoCAM knew dropped the per piece cost significantly, and I never would have learned it without them!
Do you have a similar experience? Let us know by reaching out via the "Contact" page!