Our hardware engineering partner subcontracted the design to a team of industrial designers they'd worked with in the past. We ordered prototypes of the design from both China and vendors in the US. The Chinese versions were better by leaps and bounds.[0]
We iterated a few times from there and eventually landed on a design we liked and worked with the Chinese vendor to produce the first few thousand. The Chinese vendor kept running into issues, though, so they were producing them at about 50% the speed they quoted, which was just barely enough to keep up with our sales.
When we switched to the contract manufacturer, they took over manufacturing the cases in Vietnam. They had trouble getting started as well, but they got the hang of it after a couple of months and can produce cases much faster than we consume them.
Was wondering about this is you don’t mind. The post states disappointment with the US manufacturer but for a prototype. Maybe it could have been improved if you’d asked? Perhaps they didn’t know they were in a horse race.
I tend to think of a prototype as a rough sketch. Unless of course they told me it was a demo to win the job.
The impression I got was that they really weren't interested in working with me. Most of the sheet metal vendors I reached out to didn't even return my calls.
The one vendor that called back accepted the job, but when it was done, they just handed me the prototype and asked for my money. They never asked whether I was satisfied or if there were things they could improve if given the opportunity.
