Primed.Design is Cast Iron CAD’s Amazon-seller practice.
Led by Dave Lock, a mechanical engineer with 40+ product development projects and a seat on the University of Brighton Industrial Advisory Board.
Why does an engineering firm run a separate Amazon practice?
Because UK Amazon sellers kept arriving at Cast Iron CAD with the same problem, and it wasn’t the shape CIC’s general engineering work was built around.
They weren’t asking for a one-off part or a machine. They were asking how to move off a white-label product the factory also sells to ten competitors, without blowing up the business funding them, and they needed it to fit Amazon’s particular world: FBA, category rules, Brand Registry, margin structure.
Rather than bolt that onto Cast Iron CAD generally, we separated it into a named practice with its own productised Edge Sprint and an Amazon-specific methodology. Primed.Design is not a rebrand of Cast Iron CAD, and it is not a separate company. It is a focused practice inside CIC, pointed at one operator with one problem.
Dave Lock.
Dave is a mechanical engineer and the Technical Director of Cast Iron CAD Ltd. He has led 40+ product development projects across consumer goods, industrial equipment and bespoke builds, taking products from brief through CAD, design-for-manufacture and supplier-managed tooling. He sits on the University of Brighton Industrial Advisory Board and lectures in product design and engineering.
The Edge Sprint is Dave personally. No hand-off to a junior. When the work moves into a Design Phase, he leads it and the Cast Iron CAD bench supports it.
What is Cast Iron CAD, and why does it sit behind this?
It is the product design and engineering practice Primed.Design is built on, and the reason a small Amazon-focused practice can deliver real engineering.
Cast Iron CAD takes SMEs, startups and innovators from concept through engineering to manufacturing support. The 40+ projects behind Primed.Design are CIC’s. That track record, and the engineering bench it runs on, is what lets a lean practice deliver without pretending to be a large agency.
It also matters for what happens after a Sprint. When a product is worth building, the Design Phase and any manufacturing run through Cast Iron CAD’s established engineering and supplier network, not a chain of strangers. The parent practice is the reason Primed.Design can stay lean and still ship.
Cast Iron CAD prototyping bench · Plus X Innovation, Brighton
Is this one person, or a team?
Both, and it is worth being plain about which is which.
Dave is the operator. He runs the Edge Sprint himself, start to finish. Behind him, Cast Iron CAD’s engineering contractors and partner network, patent attorneys, regulatory consultants and manufacturing partners, are named delivery resources brought in where the work needs them. Design Phase projects are Dave-led and bench-supported.
What Primed.Design is not is a twenty-person agency with an account manager between you and the engineer. That is the point, not a gap. You deal with the person doing the work.
What won’t you do for me?
Primed.Design engineers products. It does not run your marketing, and it does not give legal advice.
It does not run your Amazon advertising, write or optimise your listings, or manage your PPC. It does not do brand identity or graphic design. And on intellectual property: we coordinate IP and compliance via partners — we do not provide legal advice. Patent and freedom-to-operate opinions come from qualified attorneys we bring in, not from us.
If you need the things we don’t do, we can usually point you to someone who does. Knowing where our work stops is part of doing it well.
Primed.Design is Cast Iron CAD’s Amazon-seller practice. Led by Dave Lock, 40+ product development projects, University of Brighton Industrial Advisory Board.
If this is the kind of practice you want engineering your next product, the Edge Sprint is the way in.
A 1–2 week, fixed-price read on whether your product is worth engineering. £1,250 + VAT. Delivered by Dave.