500 Plastic Fabricated Retail Displays with Custom Thermoforming

Background

For a new video eyewear consumer product, a well-established industrial design & product development firm based in Rochester, NY had been working with a video eyewear developer to design a retail store demo experience. To be more specific, the vision included a tabletop-style demo kiosk with LCD display to debut in the ever busy, hands-on retail chain Brookstone including mall and airport locations.

The industrial design company had already designed a working prototype that was scaled to fit a Brookstone LCD display and emulate the desired customer experience. Additionally the electronic components necessary for powering the display and eyewear had already been chosen.

Challenge

The industrial design company chose CCMI Plastics to produce a durable plastic housing based on the working prototype. The priority of the project was ensuring that the plastic housing units could be completed quickly in order to accelerate the products timeline to market. The goal was 500 video eyewear display/demo stations actively used in Brookstone stores within ten weeks.

Solution

CCMI Plastics invited the industrial design company project team to tour their facility in Geneva, NY to discuss CCMI’s capabilities in-person. The industrial design company and CCMI collaborated on finalizing the specs of the final product and creating a quality assurance checklist. CCMI was able to custom thermoform the main plastic housing, mount the circuit boards, build brackets for holding the electronic comportments, fabricate the display, assemble all components, and manage the fulfillment with specialty packaging shipped directly to Brookstone locations around the country. This job scope was ideal for engaging all departments of CCMI.

Conclusion

CCMI provided a refined working prototype in 2 weeks. As a result of a good working dynamic with the industrial design company, the store-ready product arrived on-time and shipped within 6 weeks from the initial meeting.

CCMI immediately received very positive feedback regarding durability.  And in the retail locations that continued to stock the video eyewear, the kiosks were still performing well after one year. When some of the electronic components needed to be updated, CCMI was able to quickly make the replacements and turnaround the project again.