Frequently asked questions.

It starts with a conversation. We’ll quickly determine if we’re a good fit for your business and your product. If we’re not, we’ll let you know, and try to make a referral to a better fit. If we are, we’ll get an engagement agreement in place and schedule a start date for working on your first project.

SGW projects typically range from $15k to $2MM in development and prototyping costs.

The cost to develop a product is driven by many factors:

1. Product complexity
2. How much cost-optimization is required
3. Regulatory requirements
4. Level of design refinement desired

Yes. Over half of our clients have internal engineering or R&D teams. These businesses hire us for a few different reasons:

1. Their internal teams are already overburdened with the day-to-day sustaining engineering required for existing product lines.
2. They’re lacking the specific skills and expertise required for product development (as opposed to sustaining engineering or primary R&D).
3. Projects are behind schedule, and a fresh approach or perspective is needed to get things moving again.

The companies that have been most successful working with us have realistic budget and timing expectations, know their market space well, have access to users, and are willing to question their own assumptions about how people buy and use their products.

Developing products from scratch requires an understanding of how intellectual property is developed to create something novel enough to be compelling in the marketplace. It is through build-learn-build that innovation makes it to market. The more you do it, the more unique and valuable your solution will be. This can look unattractive to someone just wanting to know "what it will cost". Assume it will cost 3 times more than you think.

For these reasons SGW is typically not a good fit for:

1. Speculative startup ideas that are not ready to get started. Honestly, this goes for any firm. You don't want to engage a firm too early. Reach out when you are ready to move forward and have a budget.
2. Limited-funding, "Start and stop" projects. Getting going and then stopping can be very costly. Pausing and restarting means continually needing "to get up to speed" or having to communicate updates when not much is happening. The more dedicated you, are the more productive you are. It's best to get your ducks in a row and then move fast. That's the best way to create momentum, stay excited and save money in the long run.
3. Self-funded, DIY Inventors. Self-funding adds a complex emotional layer that can stifle innovation. Innovation means taking risks. Those risks are the path to success but often they are mistaken for failure. Likewise, DIY inventors have an emotional connection that is hard to let go of, they are only used to spending money on materials and not an expert's time. Without a high level of respect and trust for those whom you are hiring, you can end up being disgruntled by the cost to get someone up to speed on all that you have tried and learned to this point.

We can be your team or we can extend your team.

We need to fully understand your business goals and your constraints so that we can make development decisions that will work for you long term. We’ll be talking a lot about:

1. Cost targets
2. Target users
3. Feature tradeoffs

All of these factors impact not just the product, but also your business more broadly.

You can expect regular collaboration with our team (e.g. weekly progress reviews).

You can expect us to learn unexpected things along the way (e.g. that a feature needs to be excluded, or that a different material is better suited to a certain part). Many of the products we work on pivot from the original vision in some way during development based on findings from prototype testing.

Yes. While a good portion of our clients are established businesses, we do work with some well-qualified startups as well. Well-qualified startups have funding for the development effort and are open to new ideas about their product, the features it delivers, and how it is manufactured.

Absolutely. Most of the larger businesses we work with have requirements around:

1. Drawing format
2. Dimension formats
3. Tolerances
4. Software / firmware documentation
5. Design review processes
6. Regulatory requirements

We’re accustomed to tweaking our processes and outputs to meet the needs of our clients.

Yes. Most companies that choose us as their product development team stick with us for a long time. We commonly run multiple projects in parallel for clients, and engage with businesses for long periods of time.

In these long-term relationships, we’re able to develop a deep understanding of your business and corresponding challenges. This allows us to not only work on development projects, but also to help senior leaders prioritize their development pipeline and develop long-term development plans.

Usually, development projects include a lot of uncertainty, and are impossible to fully scope out. Therefore, we break the project into phases.
We generally work on an hourly basis. We build the plan with frequent review points so you can decide whether or not to continue funding the development effort.

Established businesses may be eligible for a credit account. For newer or smaller businesses, we will work with a refundable deposit in place, eliminating the need for a credit account.

Yes. When we engage deeply with a client, the outcomes are better. We find that valuable development input comes from across an organization. We’re happy to engage with production teams, marketing groups, sales teams, and leadership teams throughout development. We’re just as comfortable in the boardroom as we are on the shop floor.

Yes. As development work progresses, we often help clients decide what the best manufacturing options are. This might be your own internal manufacturing team, or an outside contract manufacturer, or a combination of both. We have relationships with reputable manufacturers in the U.S. and overseas. We also are experienced in identifying and vetting specialty contract manufacturers with specific capabilities.

There is a right time and wrong time to get a non-disclosure agreement in place. Typically, we’re able to get through an initial high level discussion without the need for an NDA. This allows us to make sure both parties feel that SGW is a fit for you prior to the administrative step of signing the NDA. Once both parties agree that a deeper exploration or engagement makes sense, we can get non-disclosures in place. We generally prefer to use our own NDA, but can review others as well.

Most of our design work happens in SolidWorks, Rhino, Keyshot, 3DS, and Altium.

We do have a number of clients that work in other programs, such as Fusion 360, Siemens NX, Catia, Solid Edge, etc.

We’re generally able to provide outputs from our programs that work in the platforms our clients use.

No, our core expertise is development. We do develop equipment and machines for many different applications. These projects are a fit when the goal is to develop something that is not already commercially available. We approach these as development projects, as opposed to sales of a machine. We do typically build prototypes and iterate the equipment in-house as development progresses.