Challenge

Establish and grow a design, engineering, and product development consultancy tightly focused on the startup and inventor market.

Solution

Implement integrated SOLIDWORKS® solutions, including mechanical design, electrical design, PCB design, simulation, visualization, manufacturing, inspection, and technical communications solutions.

Results

  • Reduced time to market by 50 percent
  • Cut product development costs in half
  • Decreased volume of prototyping required by 50 percent
  • Slashed volume of defects and rework in half

Way ahead of the current “maker” and tech incubator trends, MAKO Design + Invent hit the ground running back in 1999 with the mission to enable inventors, startups, and small businesses to take their ideas from concept to store shelves.

In addition to more than a dozen awards, MAKO recently won the 2020 Red Dot Award, recognition by an eminent panel of judges for distinguished product design, for the design of the ROVER Packhopper, an innovative tool for tennis players.

CEO Kevin Mako was still in high school in 1999 when he founded his company that has flourished and grown – without financing or debt – since its inception. The company started in Toronto, but today has U.S. offices in Austin, Miami, and San Francisco.

 

Mako Design Petbot

 

Quality Design Modest Price

MAKO must leverage operational efficiencies to a larger degree than most design consultancies to keep its services affordable for its clients. The company offers in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing including strategic marketing, sales, and distribution services.

Kevin Mako attributes his company’s success and growth to its philosophy of leveraging technology in the most efficient ways possible.

 

I knew that if we leveraged integrated software tools that are either networked across our offices or based in the cloud, our top talent could achieve the operational and product development efficiencies that would make our services significantly less expensive than conventional design firms and more attractive and affordable to our targeted portion of the market.

Kevin Mako
CEO and Founder

Related Resources

Seamless Collaboration

To perfect the mechanics from a napkin-sketch concept in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner, MAKO implements the integrated SOLIDWORKS® 3D product development and 3DEXPERIENCE® Works tools.

According to Mako, “The fact that SOLIDWORKS solutions are integrated and work seamlessly with each other is very valuable to us, because it enables us to consistently deliver quality, innovative products faster and at lower cost than previously possible,” stresses Mako.

 

Companion Bike

 

Saving Time, Money, and Rework by 50 Percent

With integrated SOLIDWORKS solutions, MAKO is able to cut both time to market and development costs by 50 percent. Helping clients launch quality products in half the time is critical to nabbing market share and becoming an attractive target for acquisition by large, international manufacturers.

Quality, however, is not sacrificed as time and money are saved: MAKO has improved quality while reducing prototyping requirements. Since designers can reduce the number of prototypes with digital validation in SOLIDWORKS, prototypes have been reduced from five or six rounds to two or three rounds.

More recently, SOLIDWORKS Simulation tools have enabled MAKO to improve quality across the board by cutting the incidence of defects and related rework by 50 percent.

 

 

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