August 2006 - A modern-day Santa's workshop - Gwinnett Business Journal

by Christopher Lancette

Lawrenceville's Slingshot Product Development Group turns ideas into reality - taking them from conception to the marketplace. Pondering, sketching, hammering, drilling and painting, the magic taking place at its workshop would make certain North Pole residents proud.

It's a broiling hot day in Santa Cruz, Calif., but inventor-turned-entrepreneur Jim Chelossi sits at his desk like a kid waiting for Santa Claus to drop down the chimney. He's waiting on a package all right, but not from 'ol Saint Nick: a Fed-Ex from China is what's putting the butterflies in his belly.

The special delivery will contain the final prototype for Chelossi's latest creation - the Cleaning Caddy portable golf ball washer that will soon enable Tiger wannabes and hackers of all stripes to clean up their mistakes. Within 60 days of signing the delivery slip, the product will fly on to market and, Chelossi hopes, strike green for his company. As in big dollars from the latest gadget every golfer must have.

The device that clips on to golf bags was not easy to design, and the Cleaning Caddy didn't come from the North Pole. Slingshot Product Development Group brought the idea to life at its workshop right here in Gwinnett County - just as it has for many other companies over the past five years. Working mostly for Fortune 500 companies and major government agencies, along with inventors such as Chelossi, Slingshot provides a one-stop shop experience that takes clients from the spark of an idea to a manufactured product on store shelves.

"A great day for us is when, through innovation, we've created a product or a new feature for a product that solves a problem or fills a hole in the marketplace," Slingshot lead designer Noah McNeely says.

The key to success?

"We develop the right products and we develop products right," says Slingshot President Sam Zaidspiner, who founded the company more than five years ago and first worked from a bedroom table. He has since grown the firm to a spacious new office in Lawrenceville and increased full-time staff to 15 while serving clients ranging from The Coca-Cola Company to NASA. It has even restored a special frame that will protect the Declaration of Independence. "We help clients dramatically accelerate their product development process - we help them make money."

Slingshot contains three divisions - consumer products, government/military, and medical - but each serve clients the same way. Incorporating the voice of clients' customers tops the list of common denominators.

"We translate what we do to the voice of the customer," Zaidspiner says. "If we don't get that right, we're dead. We want every project to be successful and we'll say no to potential clients if we don't see that they know their customers."

The process starts with a detailed brainstorming program that develops the vision for what the new product or product improvement should be. Slingshot turns the ideas into sketches and then moves to the steps of engineering and developing a prototype. Though every project is unique, the total costs for Slingshot to take a project all the way to the marketplace typically vary from $50,000 to $100,000. (The initial brainstorming and sketching phases often account for $15,000 to $30,000 of that figure.)

"It's really easy to make something that looks great that works horribly, and that looks horrible but works great," Zaidspiner says. "The magic of what we do is putting together something that looks great and works perfectly."

Innovation is a hard concept to put a finger on, but the work taking place in the company's 5,600-square-foot facility on Lakes Parkway is as tactile as it is imaginative.

Slingshot Creative Brainstorm Staff members can grab all kinds of materials off one wall board - squishy foam, scratchy carpeting, smooth glass, and plush sponge. They shift the objects around in their hands as they look at photo boards that illustrate a project's potential end users ... a fireman races into a burning building, an athlete propels his wheelchair across a track. A baby cries.

Further back, behind an array of computers capable of performing mind-boggling tasks and beneath rainbow colored kites that hang from the ceiling, work benches are covered with more tools of Slingshot's trade. A Dremel stands ready for drilling. Blackboard eraser-sized chunks of green clay wait to be molded. Paint brushes reveal specks of a dozen different hues. Hammers, X-ACTO knives, soldering torches, epoxies, batteries, bolts and wires are everywhere.

"It's like an invention factory," lead engineer George Hatzilias says. "We have a lot of fun. On a given day, we're working on the space shuttle, a toy, or something for a police car."

Any combination of the factory's idea generators and brainstorming tools may be used to develop images of a new product. Preliminary models are created. Engineers and designers pour over the fine details on their computers, then turn to the use of three-dimensional printing machines, which produce each component of a new device by printing one thin layer of it at a time. Hatzilias estimates the company can choose from any of some 200 machines depending on what materials are required to make the product.

Slingshot assembles the components, paints them if needed, and sends the rapid prototype to the client in question. It has to be perfect, Hatzilias explains, because the next step might involve "spending a quarter-million dollars on a mold."

Once a client signs off on the prototype and the mold is finalized, Zaidspiner's team coordinates the actual manufacturing of the product. The company opened Slingshot China this summer so that it could exert even more quality control over manufacturing - ensuring the final product is exactly what Slingshot designed while also creating another revenue stream.

The A to Z process concluding with products that are ready for sale earns high grades from other clients, too.

"Sam and his team do an extraordinary job of listening to what the customer wants," says KesAir Technologies Executive Vice President David Heffner, whose Kennesaw-based company used Slingshot on two air purification equipment projects. "They control the design so that it hits the marks, and they add good, solid industrial design as well as internal mechanics. Slingshot has really worked out a process that takes you through all the stages of product development and forces you to make decisions that keep you focused on your objectives. I've worked with a lot of companies that have in-house development groups and I really don't know of anyone who does it better."

Cleaning Caddy golf ball washer inventor Jim Chelossi doesn't either.

"They make it easy for you," he says. "I didn't want to go through one part of the process of developing my idea, go to another company, start over, and go on to other companies for each of the other steps."

Now, if only Santa - er, the FedEx man - would knock on his office door.

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About Slingshot Product Development Group

Slingshot is one of the Southeast's leading product design and development organizations. The company's development teams utilize unique and proven strategies to rapidly launch products for clients in a variety of industries, including consumer products, medical, electronics, military/security, automotive, aerospace, toys, and other categories. Slingshot has developed products with dozens of corporate clients including The Coca-Cola Company, Plantronics, Conair, Kimberly Clark, CharBroil and Lockheed, as well as with innovation-based start-ups.

The company offers a full range of product development services including ideation, conceptual design, prototyping, engineering, design for manufacture, packaging and program management. Additionally, sourcing and manufacturer coordination services are offered through Slingshot's Asia office near Shanghai, China.

Slingshot Product Development Group was founded in 2001 by Sam Zaidspiner, President; George Hatzilias, Vice President of Engineering; and Noah McNeely, Vice President of Design.