We-Vibe® – Adult Lifestyle Luxury Product
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“Design 1st’s ability to balance artistry and engineering played a key role in ensuring the We-Vibe® design resulted in a product that was both beautiful and functional. The Design 1st team consistently proved themselves to be a valuable and trusted partner, from their holistic involvement to their invaluable expertise in “design for manufacturability" and “design for quality”. The We-Vibe® has a return rate of 0.2% which is fantastic compared to the industry norm of 1 to 5%. We appreciated that they made this target for quality a reality. We will continue to use Design 1st as our product design company for our next products.
Bruce Murison, Founder
Project
Standard Innovation Corporation is the maker of the We-Vibe®, a new adult lifestyle luxury product that is a truly innovative and environmentally-friendly adult sex toy. Winner of several awards and featured recently in many international publications, the We-Vibe® is a new generation of personal vibrator that has found great success in the growing adult toy market. Invented by Bruce Murison, a former Nortel Engineer, the We-Vibe® product incorporates numerous innovations that make it a very popular product.
Summary
After several years of garage creation, defining, testing and preparing his invention for market, Murison came to Design 1st for a scalable product solution and within eight months the product which started with significant technical and manufacturing challenges came into volume production. The We-Vibe® would bring high technology into the adult toy market, which is starved for truly innovative products. Unique in design, the waterproof We-Vibe® is created from 100% medical grade silicone and is rechargeable. Also, small in size, the We-Vibe® is approximately 3.25 inches long and 1 inch wide, weighing only 60 grams (2 ounces).
Solution
From the client’s design and working prototypes, Design 1st devised a way to take the intent of the hand models (and their unique forms) and develop a strategy to stay as close as possible to the intent while determining a structure strategy. The unique structure strategy included a molding around the heat sensitive electronics and batteries to provide a fully enclosed waterproof silicon skin. It was challenging to find a solution for a sealed product that needed circuitry, a switch, charging strategy, batteries and wiring to contain two powerful remote motors.
All this and the unit had to meet exacting dimension requirements for fit with controlled flexing in two locations. The hand model was scanned and the design was captured in 3D CAD.To over mold the product reliably, the team designed the multi-part silicon over mold tooling to transfer the finalized solution to the manufacturer to produce the custom tooling for this unique product. Working closely with Murison, the design was completed, prototyped and tested and moved into a mass production ready state.
Design 1st developed a non-standard silicon over molding method that not only made this possible but achieved production yields far better than the industry standard. This yield improvement continues to deliver ongoing cost savings and serves as a competitive advantage for the We-Vibe® product. Being an environmentally aware applications engineer, Murison wanted the We-Vibe® to be RoHS lead free, WEEE compliant, phthalate free and carbon neutral. Being both phthalate free as well as soft and supple, medical grade silicone would be the perfect material for this product. Design 1st’s knowledge in materials and plastics was critical both in the research and final selection of the silicone.
Benefits
Design 1st works well with inventors to mutually create and develop products that are user-oriented, well engineered and optimized for both cost and ease of volume assembly as well as achieving compliance with environmental and other certification standards.
The We-Vibe® is a good example of how careful and competent design for manufacture brings a fast return on the R&D costs using an experienced development and design partner with a strong network. Overall, the project was a “wonderful” collaboration between the client, the industrial design and the mechanical engineering team. This kind of collaboration defines Design 1st.
Company Profile
Standard Innovation Corporation is the company behind the wildly successful We-Vibe®. The market place has rewarded We-Vibe® with international awards, glowing reviews, extensive media coverage, and exceptional consumer interest. Plans are in place to produce a whole family of "never seen before" toys.
Located in Ottawa, Canada, Standard Innovation Corporation is a research and design company specializing in developing cutting edge manufacturing techniques with patented product development. We manufacture and distribute our products worldwide through our select group of distributors. For more information, please visit www.we-vibe.com.