A company based in the U.S. Southwest makes innovative optics for racing cars and other extreme vehicles. Recently the owners, who grew up in Southern California’s skateboard culture, came up with a new product idea for a kick scooter, mainly for kids, based on the design of a skateboard. The company applied for the worldwide patent in 2007. It was approved in 2009 and they soon began the serious product design and engineering phase of creating the scooter.

Phase 1–Designing the deck

The challenge

The owners realized that the quickest way to develop a product based on an existing one was to obtain a 3-D model for that existing object, in this case, an off-the-shelf skateboard deck. They could then reverse engineer the deck shape, easily incorporating their design changes in the computer-aided design (CAD) data.

The company had heard of 3-D laser scanning and thought it was a great idea, but did not have any connections in the industry. Internet search results produced GKS Global Services at the top of the list and conversations with an account manager confirmed that GKS could do the job accurately, quickly, and cost effectively.

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