Rolls-Royce thinking for a $4 product: Church & Dwight's design process for OxiClean

Tools used

Balancing brand, functionality, and a consumer who's always right

Church & Dwight owns some of the most-bought household brands in the United States, including Arm & Hammer, Batiste, OxiClean, Water Pik, and dozens more. The design team behind these products is small: 4 industrial designers in the US, and a handful more across the UK, Canada, and Asia. Every product has to navigate marketing, engineering, R&D, regulatory requirements, supplier constraints, and consumer feedback, often in parallel.

When the brief landed to redesign the OxiClean stain remover, the challenge was layered. The existing product had 7 components. As a result, the replacement product had to include fewer parts to fit new requirements for multiple markets, work as a tool rather than simply a dispenser, deliver more value to the customer, and still look and feel like the familiar OxiClean brand.

The new plan was to design a product that a consumer could use to scrub fabric with one hand while dispensing stain removal gel with precision. For Sergio Gedanke, Associate Director of Design and Innovation at Church & Dwight, and the rest of the design team, that meant designing something that looks like a good-value $4 item on a CVS shelf, and treating it with the rigor you’d give a high-end vehicle design.

Consumer validation at the heart of the design process

The team’s process has always put consumer insight at the center. Early-stage testing with 25 to 30 people reveals how hands naturally hold and rotate a bottle, whether someone picks it up like a pen or grips it like a handle, and how easily consumers find the product on the shelf. All of these observations shape the product design before anything is locked.

With Gravity Sketch, the team could now respond much faster to what they were learning. Concepts that used to queue for CAD time could be modeled, exported as STLs, and 3D printed in targeted sections fast enough to get back in front of consumers in the same session. Ideas that weren’t working could be adjusted and reassembled before the next round of feedback.

"The speed that we get through a process like this is tremendous because you could have consumers waiting in the other room for us to show a 3D printed prototype, and Gravity Sketch in this case is a tool for us today in order to do that kind of work where we can generate multiple ideas, 3D print them in specific areas, and assemble a new model each time."

Sergio Gedanke, Associate Director — Design and Innovation, Church & Dwight

Going forward, VR environments will also have a prominent place in the many consumer feedback and testing rounds Church & Dwight does as part of product design. “Most recently, we are introducing Gravity Sketch to a few members of our consumer experience team because we feel that the tool could also lead us to do some of that consumer interaction and studies in virtual reality as well and be able to design on the spot,” Sergio says. The goal is to run VR-based consumer interaction studies directly in the space where the design is being built, placing objects in AR, adjusting them in response to feedback, and removing the gap between designing and testing.

From brand brief to shelf: moving beyond 2D design

The workflow runs from brand analysis and early 2D sketching through to consumer validation and supplier sign-off, with Gravity Sketch sitting in the middle of the iteration cycle and expanding across more of the process over time.

Step 1: Brand and regulatory analysis. The design process starts with taking the existing product apart, literally. Components that can’t meet new regulations or don’t fit their purpose are flagged for removal.
Step 2: 2D sketching and mood boarding. Early ideation with mood boards and digital sketches before consumer validation begins.
Step 3: Rapid 3D modeling and prototype assembly. Concepts are built in Gravity Sketch and exported as STLs for 3D printing. Rather than printing full models, the team prints targeted sections and assembles them into testable prototypes, making it possible to iterate on specific features between consumer testing rounds.
Step 4: Consumer testing and behavior observation. Physical prototypes go into the hands of 25 to 30 consumers per round. The team watches rather than asks.
Step 5: Stakeholder communication and reviews. Renders are shared with marketing, engineering, and suppliers to build alignment before moving into full CAD. For mold makers reviewing design for manufacture, a clear 3D visual of symmetry versus asymmetry, of surface complexity and assembly stages, is enough to flag cost implications and tooling concerns early, without the team sitting in CAD first.
Step 6: VR consumer research and virtual design studio. The team uses a virtual design studio in Gravity Sketch to share designs with senior leadership, and is actively bringing the consumer experience team into the tool.

Reduced prototype costs and lead times

“We went from 7 parts to 3. We improved overall ergonomics. We improved the cost. We improved automation. We had a lot of cost savings on this,” Sergio describes the success. Even the automation on the filling line became more consistent, and as the existing shipper dimensions stayed the same, Church & Dwight was able to preserve shelf space and retail merchandising slots without any renegotiation.

None of these outcomes came from designing in a vacuum. They came from a process where consumer feedback shaped the form at every stage, where engineering constraints were introduced early rather than as a late-stage veto, and where faster iteration meant the team could keep up with what they were learning through consumer testing.