Cowboy
From design to manufacturable: how Voxdale helped Cowboy fix the DFM gap on a connected e-bike
Case Overview
Voxdale embedded a team of engineers and designers inside Cowboy to close the gap between design and manufacturing — leading redesigns, solving quality and cost issues, and managing the program with Cowboy's contract manufacturer.
Sector
Consumer Electronics · E-Bike / Micromobility
Client
Cowboy, a connected e-bike company [TO CONFIRM: full company description, HQ, founding]
Product
A connected e-bike (Cowboy 3 referenced in source) [TO CONFIRM: exact model scope]
Voxdale's role
Design support: mechanical development, design-for-manufacturing (DFM), program management, redesigns, quick prototyping
Technologies
Redesigned/improved mechanical parts, DFM with the contract manufacturer, prototyping to resolve gear issues
How we worked
An outsourced team of 2–3 engineers and designers embedded in Cowboy; Voxdale led some internal Cowboy design teams
Hardest challenge
Delivering fast under very high pressure while raising quality, where quality escapes threaten a startup's cash and profitability
Case Overview
Voxdale embedded a team of engineers and designers inside Cowboy to close the gap between design and manufacturing — leading redesigns, solving quality and cost issues, and managing the program with Cowboy's contract manufacturer.
Sector
Consumer Electronics · E-Bike / Micromobility
Client
Cowboy, a connected e-bike company [TO CONFIRM: full company description, HQ, founding]
Product
A connected e-bike (Cowboy 3 referenced in source) [TO CONFIRM: exact model scope]
Voxdale's role
Design support: mechanical development, design-for-manufacturing (DFM), program management, redesigns, quick prototyping
Technologies
Redesigned/improved mechanical parts, DFM with the contract manufacturer, prototyping to resolve gear issues
How we worked
An outsourced team of 2–3 engineers and designers embedded in Cowboy; Voxdale led some internal Cowboy design teams
Hardest challenge
Delivering fast under very high pressure while raising quality, where quality escapes threaten a startup's cash and profitability
Case Overview
Voxdale embedded a team of engineers and designers inside Cowboy to close the gap between design and manufacturing — leading redesigns, solving quality and cost issues, and managing the program with Cowboy's contract manufacturer.
Sector
Consumer Electronics · E-Bike / Micromobility
Client
Cowboy, a connected e-bike company [TO CONFIRM: full company description, HQ, founding]
Product
A connected e-bike (Cowboy 3 referenced in source) [TO CONFIRM: exact model scope]
Voxdale's role
Design support: mechanical development, design-for-manufacturing (DFM), program management, redesigns, quick prototyping
Technologies
Redesigned/improved mechanical parts, DFM with the contract manufacturer, prototyping to resolve gear issues
How we worked
An outsourced team of 2–3 engineers and designers embedded in Cowboy; Voxdale led some internal Cowboy design teams
Hardest challenge
Delivering fast under very high pressure while raising quality, where quality escapes threaten a startup's cash and profitability
Executive Summary
Cowboy had designed a connected e-bike but was struggling to move it cleanly from design into manufacturing.
On the Cowboy 3, parts were failing — driving reworks, quality problems and cost overruns — the classic and dangerous gap where a design that works on paper does not manufacture reliably.
Voxdale stepped in with an embedded team of two to three engineers and designers who supported, and in places led, Cowboy's internal design work: redesigning parts, solving quality issues, and driving design-for-manufacturing with Cowboy's contract manufacturing partner.
Voxdale also handled program management and ran quick prototyping to resolve gear issues. The defining constraint throughout was pressure: results had to come fast, and at a scale-up, quality failures translate directly into cash and profitability risk.
Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Client Context
Cowboy is a connected e-bike company in the consumer-electronics / micromobility space. Its product is a connected e-bike; the source material references the Cowboy 3 specifically.
By the time Voxdale was brought in, Cowboy had already developed the e-bike as a design but was struggling with the transfer from design to design-for-manufacturing. Many parts on the Cowboy 3 were failing, producing a cycle of reworks, quality issues and cost issues.
As a scale-up, Cowboy faced these problems under acute commercial pressure — quality escapes at a startup can turn quickly into cash and profitability problems.
Client Context
Client Context
The Technical Brief
Close the gap between Cowboy's design and manufacturable design (DFM) with the contract manufacturing partner
Fix parts that were failing on the Cowboy 3
Reduce reworks, quality issues and cost issues
Provide senior engineering and design capacity that could integrate into Cowboy's own teams
Resolve specific gear issues via quick prototyping
Provide program management across the effort
The Technical Brief
The Technical Brief
The Harder, Less Obvious Part
Four pressures made this harder than a standard redesign brief:
Speed under commercial pressure. The team was under very high pressure to deliver fast results — fixes could not take the time a clean-sheet process would allow.
Quality as a survival issue, not a metric. At a scale-up, quality problems translate directly into cash and profitability risk, so improvements had to be real and durable, not cosmetic, while still being fast.
A live product already in production. Parts were failing on a shipping product (Cowboy 3), so redesigns had to slot into an existing design and an existing manufacturing setup, not a blank canvas.
Working inside someone else's organisation. Voxdale had to embed in Cowboy's teams — supporting and sometimes leading internal design groups — rather than working at arm's length.
The Harder, Less Obvious Part
The Harder, Less Obvious Part
What Voxdale Delivered
Voxdale engineered five generations of the C2K device in direct co-development with ITM's clinical research team.
Mechanical development and design-for-manufacturing. Voxdale led the mechanical development of the bike in design-for-manufacturing, working directly with Cowboy's contract manufacturing partner to make parts that could be produced reliably and at cost — the core of closing the design-to-DFM gap.
Redesigns of failing parts. Many parts on the Cowboy 3 were failing. Voxdale carried out redesigns to resolve these failures and the associated reworks, quality issues and cost issues.
Embedded engineering and design team. Voxdale outsourced a team of two to three engineers and designers to support Cowboy, solving problems and improving quality issues from inside the company. In places, Voxdale led design teams internally at Cowboy rather than only contributing individual work.
Program management. Voxdale provided program management across the engagement, coordinating the redesign and DFM work.
Quick prototyping to solve gear issues. Voxdale used quick prototyping to resolve specific gear issues on the bike.
What Voxdale Delivered
What Voxdale Delivered
How We Worked
Voxdale embedded an outsourced team directly into Cowboy rather than working purely at arm’s length:
Project lead — Tim — direction and coordination of the engagement.
Embedded engineers and designers (2–3) — redesigns, DFM, and quality problem-solving, supporting and in places leading Cowboy’s internal design teams.
The effective part was proximity and ownership: because the team worked inside Cowboy and took the lead on design in places, it could move at the speed the situation demanded and act on quality and cost problems directly
How We Worked
How We Worked
The Hardest Challenge — and How We Solved It
The challenge. Delivering fast, durable fixes to a failing, in-production design while under very high pressure — where quality problems were not just technical defects but direct threats to a scale-up’s cash and profitability.
Why it was difficult. Two pressures pulled against each other: speed (the demand for fast results) and quality/cost (fixes had to genuinely reduce failures, reworks and cost, because the commercial consequences of getting it wrong were severe). Doing this inside an existing product and an existing manufacturing relationship left little room to start over.
What would not work. A slow, clean-sheet redesign process, or arm’s-length consulting that produced recommendations rather than manufacturable parts, would not have met either the speed or the ownership the situation required.
What we changed:
Embed the team inside Cowboy. Two to three engineers and designers worked from within, supporting and leading internal design teams so decisions and redesigns happened fast.
Design for manufacturing with the contract manufacturer in the loop. Mechanical development was done as DFM directly with the contract manufacturer, so redesigned parts were producible, not just improved on paper.
Prototype quickly to unblock. Quick prototyping was used to resolve gear issues rather than waiting on full production cycles.
The Hardest Challenge — and How We Solved It
The Hardest Challenge — and How We Solved It
Outcome
An embedded Voxdale team (2–3 engineers/designers) supporting and leading design work inside Cowboy
Mechanical redesigns and DFM delivered with Cowboy's contract manufacturing partner
Gear issues addressed through quick prototyping
Program management provided across the effort
Outcome
Outcome
What This Proves for Similar Teams
This case is for hardware scale-ups and consumer-electronics companies stuck at the design-to-manufacturing transition — where the product is designed but parts fail in production, driving reworks, quality issues and cost.
It shows Voxdale can embed senior engineers and designers into a client’s own teams, take ownership of redesigns and DFM alongside the contract manufacturer, and deliver fast under real commercial pressure.
What This Proves for Similar Teams
What This Proves for Similar Teams
Discuss your hardware design-for-manufacturing challenge with Voxdale
Voxdale embeds senior engineers and designers directly inside your team — closing DFM gaps, redesigning failing parts, and working with your contract manufacturer to deliver fast, durable fixes under real commercial pressure. Explore our Industrialisation capabilities or contact us to discuss your production quality challenge.
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© 2026 Voxdale BV
© 2026 Voxdale BV
© 2026 Voxdale BV