There’s a persistent theory in hardware that manufacturing overseas is the cheaper/better/more efficient option. You manufacture there, assemble somewhere else, and finally approve and get to market in the United States.
But it turns out that it’s possible to manufacture closer to home. With supply chains in the news more than ever, “nearshoring” is an option for startups; it turns out you can build in your own backyard many of the things you can build overseas, with surprising benefits along the way.
To learn more about how to pull your manufacturing back — or to set up a local supply chain in the first place — we connected with FORGE, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that’s on a mission to assist innovators in building relationships with manufacturers and designers much closer to home. So far, it has supported over 600 startups with their manufacturing, product development and supply chain needs, and it wants to help many, many more.
“We help innovators, folks with innovative products, companies, individual inventors, specifically with their product development, manufacturing and supply chain,” explained Laura Teicher, FORGE’s executive director. “There’s a tremendous number of support organizations in the ecosystem, but many of them are focused on business planning, fundraising, on these other aspects of business. And hardware is hard. It has a higher failure rate. It has additional challenges. And that’s where FORGE is laser-focused.”
Hardware is indeed hard. Inventions don’t spring fully formed from their inventors’ brains, and manufacturing at scale is particularly challenging. So let’s take a closer look at FORGE, how it works and how it helps founders potentially manufacture on the other side of town instead of the other side of the world.
“Founders have the domain expertise to think of a product or solution, but they may have never manufactured anything in their life, never talked to a manufacturer, never scaled beyond five prototypes,” Teicher said. Provided that an innovator has a prototype for a physical product or even a component, FORGE’s remit is to guide founders through the design and manufacturing process.
“That’s where we’re most effective, because we’re really digging into issues like simplifying design for manufacturing, for assembly, for usage, nearshoring supply chains, helping with the unique strategies that people need to consider when they need to fund physical products.”
Agvios is one such startup that FORGE has guided through this process. Founded by Christoffer Abrahamsson, Agvios was connected to Bayard Design to help develop its AgvioStat device. This measures the concentration of ions in nutrient solutions and helps farmers feed their plants accurately without having to wait for outside lab analysis or perhaps applying unnecessary prophylactic fungicides.
When asked about the major pitfalls that innovators face, Teicher identified two particular areas where FORGE sees it can make the most impact: overdesigning and unpreparedness. Both of these cost time and money, and both can be mitigated with FORGE’s expertise.
“We often see things that are highly over-engineered, and folks thinking they’re ready to manufacture, but they need help with that strategy or they will burn through their runway, immediately. Overdesigning, using expensive materials or expensive processes, is common because it’s assumed that’s what’s needed,” Teicher explained. “There hasn’t been the exercise of really articulating what specifications you need to meet and finding the most cost-effective path. You know, we work with a number of companies, when you talk to them, they have 83 different suppliers. If we can help reduce that and simplify things that makes a really big difference.”
When innovators don’t have a background in manufacturing, knowing how to go about it can be fraught with difficulties and leave them completely unprepared for dealing with manufacturers.
“We see a lot of wrong assumptions about the processes and the materials needed without the very critical discipline of really outlining your specs and developing your bill of materials and all the packaging you need to do before you really can successfully engage with your average manufacturer,” Teicher noted.
As well as being a waste of time and money, not having the right specs before engaging with a manufacturer can kill a project before it even begins.
“We see a lot of innovators that come to us that are eager to engage with manufacturers but aren’t ready. And if they go to the manufacturers at that stage, doors are going to be closed in their face and they won’t get a second chance,” Teicher said. “Manufacturing has its own challenges; no one likes to have their time wasted. So we see companies that just don’t have the right documentation or don’t have money to spend with manufacturers. And that’s where we really are able to help.”
FORGE’s track record here is impressive. It claims to have a survival rate of more than 87% across over 600 companies it has helped since 2015.
Bringing manufacturing home
FORGE is particularly keen to debunk the myth that manufacturing needs to be done overseas.
“Our average warm introduction to a right-fit supply chain partner is within about 60 miles of the innovator. And this improves outcomes for the innovators themselves. It helps reduce a lot of hidden costs that people don’t realize are associated with going overseas: shipping fees, overseas management fees, tariffs,” Teicher explained. “These are things a lot of people who are new to this world don’t even account for. And then, of course, over the last few years, there have been a lot of things that have caused global supply chain disruptions.”
Manufacturing close to home has climate-related benefits that FORGE recognizes, but they’re frequently overlooked when people are trying to manufacture a cost-effective product.
“One of the most overlooked opportunities in reducing the carbon footprint of a new product is localizing the supply chain,” Teicher said. Rather than shipping a product to one country for assembly and another for certification and yet a third for marketing, by thinking more locally, carbon footprints can be reduced. “Often companies come to us looking for a way to reduce energy usage or have more sustainable packaging, and localization is not even in the thought process.”
FORGE is a nonprofit that doesn’t charge for its support. Most of its funding comes from government grants, private foundations, sponsorships and even from within the manufacturing ecosystem, which Teicher reads as a signal that FORGE is doing it right. It is committed to keeping barriers to access low and sees this as vital to making a difference. Part of that is the FORGE Product Development Grant Program, a nondilutive, merit-based pot of funding that provides small grants to fund product development which can, for example, move prototypes onward, taking development further.
One of the companies that benefited from the program is SEED, a Los Angeles-based benefit corporation founded by Sabrina Williams. SEED is focused on helping underserved urban small-plot growers get the best out of their gardens. It used its award to help bring to market Radicle, a device that measures soil health and plants’ carbon sequestration to advise growers on whether they need to feed, alter their techniques or switch their growing conditions for optimal yields.
Another example of a company assisted by FORGE is The New Norm, which takes single-use disposable cups and turns them into textiles, using machinery the company’s founder built in her garage.
With its interactive workshop curriculum that provides companies with the tools to assess and develop their supply chains and their manufacturing strategies, its grant programs, its factory tours and its ability to introduce the right people at the right time, FORGE is committed to helping startups whenever they want or need support.
“We meet startups where they’re at. So the services we provide at different stages may look different. But we stay with them all the way through the commercial scale, if they want,” Teicher said. FORGE is looking to serve everyone that it can for as long as they want, with a philosophy of looking to do it “here” — wherever “here” is for you.