Client Background
Our customer is an aspiring Spanish budding vase dealer who deals with small decorative vases to bodeau florists and home lifestyle shops in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. When they were sourcing a new custom mini vase, they had compared several suppliers, and finally settled on Mosteb, who was an established vase manufacturer but a novice and produced a clear glass vase of 50ml with say patterns of flowers that were subtle and had a soft cork stopper.
The custom design has been commissioned to give a high-end, craftsman experience to their customers. The cut floral motif made it more textured and unique and the cork stopper enabled easy handling and small arrangements of flowers. They chose Mosteb due to our ability to do precision molding, our ability to do consistent quality in batches, and our flexibility in supporting design and sampling.
Challenges
- Consistency in Batches Etching: The initial prototypes were found to have irregular depth on the cut flower patterns that may influence the aesthetics on sales as sets.
- Cork Fit Variability: The cork stoppers sometimes are too tight or loose which may cause leakage or cause difficulty among end users when removing the stopper.
Cause Analysis
Our technical department carried out an elaborate inspection and found the root causes:
- Minor adjustments in the surface tension of the glass in the act of forming influenced the depth and visibility of the patterns that were etched.
- There were small changes in neck diameter after annealing that led to inconsistency in cork fit.
Mosteb did this to solve these problems by doing mold pressure calibration, optimizing the annealing curve to stabilize neck dimensions, and conducting repeated etching tests to guarantee uniformity.
Solution
- Isotope glass forming parameters varied in order to ensure constant surface tension during etching.
- Standardized tolerance of neck diameter up to +-0.1 mm to guarantee uniform cork fit.
- Introduced batch level checking process of the etching depth and compatibility of stoppers.
- Gave the client a sample approval of the pre-shipment to ensure quality before delivery.
Result
The last mini vases had standard patterns of etching and fitting cork tops. The Spanish trader has managed to introduce the new line to their boutique buyers, and it was well received in terms of design and functionality. Mosteb has since established them as their permanent manufacturing partner of their custom budding vases.
