CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
12 January 2010
Implementation Investments
SolidWorks Helps Maesa Studio Create Elegant, Cost-Effective Packaging For Top Cosmetic Brands
The firm that designs packaging for top cosmetic brands like Estee Lauder and Victoria’s Secret uses SolidWorks® 3D CAD software to produce designs that display its clients’ products elegantly and creatively while keeping costs in line.
SolidWorks enables design and production engineers at Los Angeles-based Maesa Studio to collaborate throughout the design process to strike the essential balance between cost limits and innovative designs that sell products. Although cleverly designed bottles, containers, and packaging are crucial to clients’ images and product sales, Maesa Studio’s Executive Vice President of Product Development Sean Brosmith said price has the final word.
“Our customers are very price sensitive because they make money in volume sales, so they need to hold down unit cost,” Brosmith said. “We could spend all day designing the most beautiful packaging possible, but if it costs 30 percent more than the client’s budget we’re not doing them any service. SolidWorks helps us from the very earliest creative and industrial design phases. When creative has a design they’re working up, they can quickly throw it over to production engineering for price referencing, to check the weight – anything that might affect cost.”
Maesa Studio, a division of Maesa Group, designs and produces paper, plastic, glass and metal packaging between facilities in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. Among its clients are international brands like Crabtree & Evelyn, L’Oreal, Bath & Body Works, and celebrities like rapper 50 Cent who launch their own product lines. Maesa Studio’s design engineers translate sketches of new containers, boxes, and displays into SolidWorks 3D models. They use the models to present concepts to clients, refine them based on the clients’ responses, then put them into production. Maesa Studio’s ability to present clients with creative, cost-effective concepts is a huge competitive advantage.
“SolidWorks is a multi-purpose tool that allows us to explore 3D concepts creatively and present conceptual designs to our clients knowing that we have CAD data ready to be passed to the engineering/production teams. That makes the interaction between our creative industrial design and engineering teams incredibly streamlined,” Brosmith said. “Our costing teams in New York and Asia use the SolidWorks data industrial designers generate to get a head start on the costing process. Through early evaluation of our designs, we can be sure items stay on budget and allow the production team to make recommendations on how to lower part costs in manufacturing, all before final engineering.”
A wide range of consumer products, from snowboards, to mountain bikes, to children’s toys, to furniture, are designed in SolidWorks by companies that want performance and cost effectiveness without sacrificing aesthetics. SolidWorks provides modeling and analysis tools that enable designers to optimize their designs throughout the product development process, balancing practicality and creativity.
“Maesa Studio is using our software to manage costs the way they should be managed. Not as a curb on creativity, but as a reality that has to be considered throughout the creative process,” said DS SolidWorks Vice President of Marketing Christine Washburn. “From design to internal and client communication, Maesa Studio is proving the value of SolidWorks.”
Maesa relies on authorized SolidWorks reseller GoEngineer for Solid Works for ongoing software training, implementation, and support.
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