Baser design and manufacture bases for parasols. With SOLIDWORKS, they could better collaborate with their suppliers.
The challenge
Early-stage start-ups are caught between a rock and a hard place. They need to get traction to raise money, but hitting key milestones often means burning some cash – cash they don’t have.
That was exactly the situation for Baser, a start-up based in Denmark. They design and manufacture bases for parasols. Back in 2014, Josefine Østerby, who’s the Managing Director , decided to convert her father’s dreams of creating a new kind of parasol base into reality. But she quickly realised she didn’t have the resources needed to afford a reliable software to get the design process started. PLM Group came to the rescue with a 12-month free entrepreneurial license for SOLIDWORKS.
The solution
SOLIDWORKS offered an attractive alternative to a pricey CAD platform – a free entrepreneurial license for 12 months. This helped Baser get started on their journey – from a cash-strapped start-up to a profitable company that is poised for growth.
Validating the concept
Baser had already determined that prospective buyers would appreciate the problem their parasol idea would solve. They were confident that they were creating something that met user needs. But they still needed validation for the concept, which meant they needed to create prototypes to raise the initial capital.
Baser used SOLIDWORKS all the way – from product design to rendering to sales during the full lifetime of the product, which made it super-valuable for the whole company. The icing on the cake? It was free for the first 12 months.
“It was a huge difference for us to get a free entrepreneurial licence. We could not have started with SOLIDWORKS in any other way. Because when you’re so small…we were only three people…you don’t have the finances to go and buy a huge software,” says Josefine Østerby, Managing Director, Baser.
Goodbye costly prototypes. Hello cost savings.
Before their new product was launched and started making money for Baser, it needed to be subjected to a number of physical tests. The traditional – but prohibitively expensive – way to test products is to build a number of physical prototypes. So along with being costly, physical testing is also slow.
SOLIDWORKS offered a rich variety of integrated simulation applications that significantly reduced the number of physical prototypes Baser had to build. It also helped slash design time, and time spent on machining, cost-estimation and inspection. This meant that Baser could put out a high quality product quickly and at a competitive price.
Louise Sandahl Ullmann, Head of Brand & Product Development adds, “SOLIDWORKS gave us the options to do rapid prototyping so we could test our product types and apply the changes in SOLIDWORKS. Then, do prototypes again and test, evaluate and apply the changes.”
Quick and efficient file-sharing with suppliers.
The number one complaint with some CAD software is that suppliers may not be able to read their file formats, which means you end up wasting precious time and resources on lengthy conversion processes that are necessary for file sharing. Sharing files with your suppliers (and customers) is a necessary part of the manufacturing process and it’s supposed to promote efficiency. So it shouldn’t be painful.
With SOLIDWORKS, Baser found that they could better collaborate with their suppliers. The ability to collaborate in 3D, further reduced costs and helped them deliver a better product, faster.
“We have some collaborators on our product development and they are using SOLIDWORKS. So it’s great that we are using the same language. So we can open each other’s files and help each other out.” Louise Sandahl Ullmann, Head of Brand & Product Development further said.
Support when it was needed, where it was needed
Some CAD vendors don’t have on-the-ground support where it’s needed the most – at the local level and in local language. What is more, having quick and easy access to expert advice and assistance from a fully certified support engineer can mean the difference between success and failure – especially when you’re a startup.
Thankfully, Baser didn’t have to worry about a thing.
“From time to time, we’ve had some difficulties and we run into some problems with SOLIDWORKS, and PLM Group is just super fast at helping. Their Customer Support is professional and helpful so that is a huge plus. We felt they were actually caring about start-ups and the start-up community so it was the obvious choice to collaborate with them,” Louise Ullmann explains.
Are you part of a start-up interested in SOLIDWORKS?
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