SOLIDWORKS Entrepreneur JURA Successfully Brings Innovative Anchor Apple AirPod Holder to Market

We had an idea and a desire to bring that idea to life. As a pre-revenue startup with limited resources, our need to stretch every dollar was at immediate odds with our need for costly but necessary resources. Creating consumer products requires the same tools regardless of size and funding. This is especially true in the mobile accessory space where speed to market and consumer cost are of paramount importance. We needed very specific software to transform our big idea into something we could hold in our hands, the SOLIDWORKS Entrepreneur Program helped us to do just that.

Companies with less than $1mm in revenue are eligible for this 12-month offering, which not only includes a full suite of 3D CAD tools, but training and awareness opportunities. Our product is an innovative attachment solution for the wildly popular Apple Airpods®. Of course, innovation requires thinking differently and taking chances. The ability to interact with our product in a live environment as well as the ability to inspect and quickly revise was critical to the process of fine-tuning our product.

Once up and running, we were able to transform our 2D images into parametric 3D models. We iterated, experimented and pushed boundaries to determine tolerances and explore use cases. This was especially important in the creation of our Titanium carabiner, the attachment point for our product, Anchor. Utilizing SOLIDWORKS Assembly Modeling, we designed a one-piece carabiner, which used Titanium’s flexible properties to open and close. Then, applying the Simulation add-in, we were able to dial-in final dimensions to achieve an optimal amount of required force.

After months of drawing, iterating and simulating, we had prototype products in-hand and were ready to bring our product to market. Again, SOLIDWORKS provided us with invaluable tools. Rather than spending big money on renderings and animations, we were able to create beautiful, sophisticated marketing assets directly from SOLIDWORKS for use in our Kickstarter campaign. Having recently closed this campaign at 229 percent of our funding goal, we are now in production and readying our initial shipments to 56 countries.