From a troubled prototype to the right manufacturing partner

A European startup building an AI education device came to us with what looked like a simple brief, find a factory in China able to reproduce a prototype they had already developed with other suppliers. The prototype did not work properly though, so before recommending anyone we had it sent over and spent almost a week with technicians diagnosing and repairing it.

Fixing it showed the real problem, the design itself was too expensive and not suited to production at scale, as the overseas design work they had paid for left it buggy and hard to manufacture. Together with Amaury we changed the brief, from copying the prototype to finding a partner able to redevelop and manufacture a commercially viable version, and as the product was quite new we looked at several types of electronics manufacturers, got quotes from more than ten factories, visited eight and shortlisted four for him to meet in China.

We organised the factory visits and supported the negotiations on the ground in Mandarin, and after three rounds the startup chose a partner for both redevelopment and manufacturing. The new professional design cost around €12k, barely more than the failed one, and brought the unit cost down from €70 to €40, 43% less, for a device that is now better and cheaper than the other AI education devices already on the market.