Here are some 'Frequently Asked Questions' to help you get to know Dragon Innovation, who we work with and what we do.
We love hardware and we have deep expertise with complex electro-mechanical consumer hardware. We work with what we love and what we're good at.
If you are a startup or established company working to scale your company and product for the first time, or looking to fine tune your process for future versions, you've come to the right place.
We can be that extension of your team as a strategic partner to introduce that expert manufacturing voice early in the process to help guarantee success and delivery of product. Check out some other companies we've helped.
We created a free Bill Of Materials tool as a Google Sheets Add-On to help teams get started with a pro-grade BOM. You can learn more here.
We support companies who are working through their ideas/prototypes with expert industry knowledge through our blog However, we do not design your product, we have available recommended resources for that.
We provide the most value when you are ready to scale and about 90 - 95% of the way to your final design. You should have a works-like/looks-like prototype, all your CAD files, and a relatively complete Bill of Materials (BOM).
If you're not sure what goes into a BOM/CAD package, here's a free checklist.
This really depends on how complex your product is and what your COGS are.
We are most effective with our partnerships in high volume manufacturing (10,000+ units in the first year), mostly based in the Far East.
However, we continue to build out our global factory database of OEM, ODM, or Hybrid JDM partner, both domestically in the US and Globally in Europe and the Far East (both China and non-China options). This helps us connect you with the right partners on most any level of manufacturing your product.
Yes, you can! We have Dragon team members located globally. In the US, Europe and the Far East. Teams from anywhere in the world can work with us for manufacturing solutions.
The best way to get the attention of potential investors is to build an amazing product with a credible manufacturing plan. While we can’t facilitate intros, we can help you make your product stronger.
We recommend that you reach out to Bolt. Bolt is a venture capital fund designed to address the unique needs of early-stage startups at the intersection of hardware and software. If you need other industry resources, check out our list of trusted companies here.
No. Dragon Innovation and Bolt are two separate organizations, but with very close ties. We’re happy to make introductions to the Bolt team for our customers, but if you’re new to Dragon and looking to raise capital we’d recommend you contact Bolt directly via their website.
Yes. In 2017, we joined Avnet. As part of Avnet we're excited we can now support and provide much more expansive options as the larger Avnet family is a world leader and an end to end solution provider.
“"I'm glad we worked with Dragon. It's really helped with understanding all the costs associated with this product domestically and overseas.””
“"As a team of first time founders, the only thing we knew going in was that 'hardware is hard', so we relied on the Dragon team to help us with our quality plan, prepare for our first site visit, and oversee critical initial production runs. Their quality plan helped our team institutionalize quality as a fundamental metric of manufacturing and understand how to measure and manage to our specifications””
““Dragon made our factory selection process much less overwhelming and gave us confidence that we found the right manufacturing partner. It’s hard to imagine finding the right factory without Dragon guiding us through the process.” ”
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