Creative Dock Group (CDG), a corporate venture builder and growth driver for companies in Europe and MENA, announced it has acquired nFrontier, an award-winning specialist in product experience and industrial design. And the innovation studio is known for its product development for clients like Airbus, BMW, Dräxlmaier, and Vossloh. And CDG’s clients include Adidas, Ahold, Amadeus, Avast, Bekaert, Holcim, Mondelēz, JTI, and Veolia.
By buying nFrontier’s expertise in prototyping, iteration, and pre-production for hardware, CDG aims to achieve what they have already done for digital products: accelerate the time-to-market of physical products and shorten innovation cycles of their customers.
This investment doubles CDG’s presence in the hardware sector, bridging the gap between digital and physical products. Previously, CDG focussed on digital products, as these enabled a fast go-to-market strategy and rapid scalability. Today, however, the picture is changing: technological advances such as additive manufacturing, CNC machining, and robotics are opening up new opportunities in the hardware sector. These developments enable more precise, flexible, and faster development of physical products, allowing companies to respond strategically to market needs, increase productivity, and tap into new value-creation potential.
The initial results from the acquisition have shown development cycles falling from 30 to 4 months. Creative Dock has set itself the goal of driving the ‘impossible’ with speed in the hardware sector, adopting the unconventional approaches that have recently revolutionized e-mobility, space, and aerospace technology, for example.
KEY QUOTES:
“Our manufacturing & FMCG customers are looking for an iterative and agile approach to developing and commercializing physical products in order to compete in the global marketplace. nFrontier has already enabled some of our customers to shorten their 30-month development cycle to just four months. This acceleration has already been seen in the digital world, and we need to transfer this speed to hardware.”
- Martin Pejsa, Executive Chairman at CDG
“We are thrilled to be the newest member of the Creative Dock family. With Creative Dock, nFrontier has found the perfect launchpad for future growth and a strong home to fulfil our mission of designing, developing, building, launching, and scaling hardware products from the ground up.”
- Daniel Buening, CEO of nFrontier
