LA NPDT — LA New Product Development Team

Our work

Product Development Examples

Real projects from our Ruston, Louisiana studio: independent inventor ideas, funded startups and established brands taken from sketch to shipping product.

Each example shows the work that mattered — the engineering call, the prototype, the tooling decision — and where the product ended up.

Pet care, feeding, comfort and interactive toy products developed end to end.

Pet Products product development

5 projects

How to read these case studies

Every project in this portfolio is a product we took through some combination of concept design, industrial design, mechanical and electronic engineering, prototyping and manufacturing. Each study records the brief the client arrived with, the constraints that shaped the design — cost targets, certification requirements, materials, tooling budgets — and the decisions that moved the product from sketch to production. Where a project shipped, the study says so; where a client chose to license or stop, it says that too, because both are real outcomes of product development.

The work spans consumer and medical devices, IoT and connected hardware, pet and outdoor products, food and beverage packaging, home and housewares, industrial equipment, and sporting goods. Some clients are first-time inventors with a drawing on one page; others are funded startups and established companies adding an engineering team for one program. Use the category filters above to narrow the grid to your industry, or the search to find a product similar to the one you are planning.

If a project here resembles what you want to build, the fastest way to scope your version is to tell us which one — the same engineers who delivered it can usually give you a realistic cost and timeline range from a short conversation.

Browse the work by what we did

Most projects here ran end to end — concept through production. If you are looking for one stage rather than a whole program, these pages explain what that stage delivers and what it costs.

Browse the work by industry

Each industry brings its own constraints — safety standards, materials rules, price ceilings, environments. Here is what shaped the work in each category.

Personal Care

Personal care products live or die on ergonomics, materials that survive water and chemicals, and packaging that feels right in the hand. Our work here runs from waterproof shavers and skincare applicators to medication-management devices — most involving IPX-rated sealing, soft-touch overmolding and cosmetic-grade surface finishes that have to survive drop tests and daily use.

Pet Products

Pet products add a complication most consumer goods don't have: the user and the buyer are different species, and the user chews. Projects in this group cover cooling vests, interactive toys and hive-treatment hardware, with design attention on bite resistance, washable materials, battery life and price points that work at retail.

Sports & Fitness

Sporting goods and fitness products are judged by feel and durability under repeated load. This group includes putting trainers, compression apparel, protective gloves and helmet-comfort systems — work that leans on ergonomic testing, textile engineering and iterative prototyping with real athletes before committing to tooling.

Product Packaging

Packaging projects start from shelf impact and end at the filling line. We design bottles, closures, dispensers and secondary packaging with attention to draft angles for molding, label real estate, shipping durability and unit cost at volume — including the 3D renderings brands use to sell the concept before a single part exists.

IoT & Consumer

Connected consumer products combine industrial design with electronics, firmware and an app that has to feel effortless. Our IoT work spans kitchen appliances, audio devices, sensors and smart home hardware — covering PCB design, wireless certification, battery management and the enclosure engineering that keeps antennas and seals happy together.

Medical Devices

Medical and wellness devices carry the highest documentation burden of anything we build. Projects here include diagnostic and therapeutic hardware developed with design controls, biocompatibility considerations and a regulatory path in mind from the first sketch — the difference between a prototype that impresses investors and one that survives a regulatory review.

Industrial Equipment

Industrial products earn their keep in harsh environments: vibration, dust, moisture and operators who don't read manuals. This group covers machinery enclosures, control interfaces and handling equipment designed for ingress protection, serviceability and manufacturing in realistic batch sizes rather than mass-market volumes.

Food & Beverage

Food and beverage hardware has to satisfy food-contact material rules, cleaning regimes and thermal cycles on top of normal product constraints. Our work in this space ranges from beverage dispensers to kitchen appliances, with material selection, crevice-free design and certification planning built in from the start.

Toys & Games

Toys look simple and aren't: safety standards for small parts, sharp edges and materials are strict, and the price ceiling is unforgiving. Projects here balance play value against ASTM and CPSIA compliance, durable mechanism design and tooling costs that keep the retail price where it needs to be.

Home & Housewares

Home and housewares products compete in crowded categories where the differentiator is usually a mechanism, a material or a manufacturing cost nobody else cracked. This group includes cleaning tools, storage and kitchen goods — projects where a single clever detail, engineered properly, is the whole product.

Baby & Juvenile

Baby and juvenile products operate under the strictest safety standards in consumer goods, from choking-hazard geometry to chemical limits on every material. Design work here is conservative by necessity: certified materials, redundant fastening, and prototypes tested against the standards before anyone talks about production.

Outdoor & Hunting

Outdoor and hunting gear is used hard, carried far and trusted when it matters. Our projects include tree-stand safety devices, scent dispensers, feeders and field accessories — engineered for UV exposure, temperature swings, silent operation and assembly with cold fingers.

Funded Startups & SBIR

Funded startups and SBIR-backed teams come to us with a grant or a round and a deadline. These programs run with defined milestones and deliverables that satisfy both the product and the funder — from feasibility studies and breadboard prototypes to the manufacturing-ready documentation a due-diligence process asks for.

More from the studio

Photography, film and the disciplines behind the product work.

  • Project photo gallery

    Prototype, model and production photography from the shop floor.

  • Video portfolio

    Product films, prototype walk-throughs and process footage.

  • Our skills

    The disciplines we run in-house and how often each one is used.

  • Site archive

    Everything we have published, listed in one place.

  • Service areas

    Where our clients are based and how remote projects run.

Brand, web and video archive

Earlier branding, rendering, website and video projects. They sit outside the product development work above, but the case studies are still here.

Start your project

See something close to what you want built?

Every project here started as a sketch, a spec or a problem someone could not buy their way out of. Tell us about yours and we reply with a realistic cost and timeline.

Sketches, drawings or CAD (optional)

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or browse your computer — up to 5 files, 25 MB each

Anything that helps us understand the part: photos, sketches, PDFs, STEP/STL files.

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