Today we’d like to introduce you to Jim Ferguson.
Hi Jim, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Growing up in Florida in the 1970s, I thrived at lake swimming, fort building, and dominating my Montessori class. In the following decade, my family moved to Georgia, where I spent my days riding my bike all over Sandy Springs, excelling in fourth-grade theatrical productions, scouting, and swim meets. I was always drawn to building and inventing, often bringing home discarded items to take apart—sometimes even managing to fix them.
After working in bike shops, record stores, and restaurants, I managed to earn degrees from Riverwood High School and Auburn University. Given my wide-ranging curiosity about industries, products, and problem-solving, it’s no surprise that I found my way into industrial design.
For decades now, I’ve been designing inventions and custom devices for clients, collaborating with dynamic, multidisciplinary design consultants, and learning from talented entrepreneurial minds along the way.
A decade ago, I founded RATIO PRODUCT LAB to provide creative product design services for a diverse range of clients—from Fortune 100 corporations to independent inventors. I’m in a unique position to help develop new product opportunities alongside clients who have deep industry knowledge. Over the last ten years, rapid advancements in technology have dramatically accelerated the product development process. Today, bringing an idea to life has never been easier—designing a 3D model and printing parts can often happen within a day.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Running a business comes with daily challenges. As the owner, I juggle developing new opportunities, drafting proposals for future work, and maintaining relationships with current and past clients—all at the same time. The product development consulting landscape is always evolving based on client needs and interests. One of the toughest parts is knowing when to turn down a project if it’s not the right fit.
As the business grows, exploring new profit centers—like on-demand 3D printing—is an exciting endeavor. With the right investment, we could increase revenue and expand our capacity to deliver fast turnarounds for more clients.
Marketing a design and product development business comes with its own hurdles, especially since many potential clients don’t know where to start when searching for an industrial design resource like RATIO. Most of our clients find us through Google reviews or word-of-mouth, proof that our reputation remains our most valuable asset.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about RATIO PRODUCT LAB?
RATIO is a product design consultancy. We are interested in creating new product ideas for our clients and ourselves. We have built solar powered coolers for Coca-Cola, invented a degassing cap for SodaStream, as well as a patented, specimen collection approach for women called TinkleTray. We have numerous patents as a result of our work with our clients. We seek innovative solutions and the most affordable approach to bring products to market.
We produce and sell our own products as MadebyRATIO. We have around 100 products that we designed and produce daily as a result of our own product curiosity. We often entertain requests we get from customers to make specialty products and sometimes those make their way online. We maintain an online web store, with an Etsy and Amazon storefront for our own products. As we see 3D printing by the end consumer continue to increase, we also offer a number of downloadable 3D print files.
We will occasionally take on quick prop work for local film and television and have made some fun one of a kind objects, including a display for a rocket engine or an over-scale Makita battery for an electronics fly over in a commercial. We have an in house 3D printer farm which allows us to make prototypes, our own products and any on demand customer requests like drone parts or cosplay files.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I wouldn’t be where I am today without the support of my Wife and family a great network of friends & associates. Their support gives me a lot of confidence to work with work with new clients and develop innovative products. Often, at some cost, I provide the most candid feedback I can when assessing a new product idea. I want my clients to be successful at the end of the effort. We always do our best to find the ultimate balance for the right product, at the right time at a cost of production and ease of assembly with limited user directions for something that seems intuitive. While it’s not always easy to develop a new product idea, remarkably a lot of things fall into place in the process.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ratio.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ratioproductlab and www.instagram.com/madebyratio
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fergusoid
- Twitter: https://www.x.com/ratioproductlab
- Other: https://www.madebyratio.com
