Methven, a leading designer and marketer of proprietary shower and tapware headquartered in New Zealand, recently launched an award winning shower infusions system.  The system enables an ordinary shower to be transformed into a personal home spa. A patented infusion pod (chromed part) is attached to an existing shower and delivers the infusion into the flow. The system contains interchangeable cartridges, which currently comes in four scents.

Gemma Rassie, Industrial Designer, shares with us her experience working with FORMERO on the development of this innovative product;

"FORMERO’s various prototyping services played a major role in the development of Methven  shower infusions system.

In the concept phase of the project, FORMERO provided quality SLAs of the numerous iterations of both the aesthetic exteriors and the functional internals of the product.

Once the design was close to being finalised, significant numbers of functional units were needed for life testing to validate the design prior to investing in production tooling.

Despite the very complex geometry of some of the components, we worked closely with FORMERO to successfully produce batches of PU cast parts that could withstand the temperatures and pressures of the tests over time. Ultimately, with FORMERO's help we were able to put 3 batches of 20 units out into field trials, providing invaluable feedback that enabled us to refine the design down to what is now the finished product".

On 16 October 2009 this innovative shower infusions system was awarded Gold at the Designers Institute of New Zealand Design Awards - Best Awards - for Product Design in the Consumer category.

Methven’s Shower Infusions also won the  Coveted 2010 Red Dot Design Award.

The prestigious Red Dot Design Awards, which are judged by an internationally renowned expert panel of designers and architects, attracted a record 4,252 entries from 1,636 companies and 57 countries and places Methven in a league of excellence with international product leaders including IPOD, AppleMac and Audi.