(Spring Creek & Morrisville, N.C.) Montie Design, an innovative concept-to-marketplace product design and development firm, today announced it will be holding a Winter 2012 Student Design Contest for aspiring product designers in community colleges, four-year colleges, or high schools from North Carolina and Virginia. Initial submissions are due on Feb 1, 2012 with final submissions due on Feb 29, with full details available online at www.montie.com/contest.
“We’ve had tremendous interns at Montie Design through the years, with several coming on board after participating in previous student design contests,” Montie Roland, president of Montie Design, said.
The firm hosted its first design contest in 2011, helping students to build their portfolio and gain invaluable real-world experience working with professional product design engineers.
Contest participants will be tasked with developing products that fit the mold of existing ones in the Montie Gear line of outdoor, shooting, hunting, archery, and camping products. This year’s focus is on gear related to camp cooking, washing or equipment storage and organization. Montie Gear products share the traits of being extremely high quality, high performance, long life and very portable.
In addition to cash prizes of $500 and $250, winning designers will be considered for a summer internship in Spring Creek, N.C., during which time they will help move their design to production and train the local workforce to manufacture their product. Winners will receive a two-year commission on any products that go to market within two years of the submission date, even if they are not a first- or second-place winner.
“One of the unique things we are doing with this particular contest is laying the groundwork for developing manufacturing in the greater Spring Creek area,” Roland said, explaining that Montie Gear products are tested at the nearby Troublesome Gap location, an area he is familiar with.
“I grew up around Asheville, and met fantastic people from Marshall, Mars Hill and Hot Springs. There is a workforce-in-waiting there that we’d like to help bring some business to,” he said.
Roland, who recently participated in a manufacturing roundtable sponsored by Capital Area Workforce Development Board, has continually hosted educational Lunch and Learns at Montie Design to share best practices in product design and engineering and regularly speaks at product design events throughout North Carolina. He is also an officer in the Carolinas Chapter of the IDSA.
For information on the Winter 2012 Student Design Contest, visit www.montie.com/contest or email montie@montie.com. To learn more about Montie Gear visit www.montiegear.com.
About Montie Design
Montie Design is an innovative concept-to-marketplace product design and development firm with core competencies in mechanical engineering and industrial design. Implementing a collaborative approach to partnering with clients, Montie Design balances vision with usability in realizing products that are economical to manufacture, elegant and robust. The firm operates out of the Southeast’s innovation hub, the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, with its wealth of industry-leading technology, resources and customers. For more information, visit www.montie.com.