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- North America
- EMEA
Soundboks is not just another audio company; it’s the creator of the Bluetooth party speaker, an entirely new category delivering portable PA level performance for parties and festivals. Founded in Denmark by a group of friends looking for the perfect outdoor party speaker, the company has grown rapidly since 2015. Soundboks operates between Copenhagen and Los Angeles, designing products that deliver professional-grade sound and durability in an intuitive, consumer-friendly format.
Arena PLM
Centralized product truth that supports multitier outsourced manufacturing
A platform built to scale with Soundboks’ product expansion
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Arena PLM
Centralized product truth that supports multitier outsourced manufacturing
A platform built to scale with Soundboks’ product expansion
In the company’s early years, Soundboks operated with a startup-style mindset using a patchwork of tools to manage and communicate product information to its suppliers. That approach worked when they had one core product and a small engineering team. As the company expanded along with its supply chain footprint, the limitations of ad hoc processes became increasingly risky.
Daniel Jorgensen, Soundboks’ Director of Global Quality recalled, “Before we had a PLM system there were Google Drive files and a lot of sharing and confirming of drawings with suppliers through e-mail and WeChat. That’s fine if you’re a small team and not expanding your portfolio too much… but when there’s real growth, keeping track of what’s truly the right drawing becomes extremely difficult.”
The company’s shift to a multitier supply chain complete with new contract manufacturers and production transitions made controlling visibility across teams and document clarity even more critical. “We onboarded significantly more contract manufacturers,” Jonas Vaabengaard, Soundboks’ Director of Project Operations, explained, “We also moved production. As the market shifts, so does the supply chain, and we need to make sure that’s aligned. You can only do that with a certain level of control. Having clear documentation is key to regaining that control.”
To help support process and information controls, Soundboks adopted their first product lifecycle management (PLM) system. While this early system offered a simple, structured environment, it lacked advanced functionality and created scalability concerns—two important business and technical needs, especially for a growing hardware company operating across continents.
The company’s existing PLM system created challenges that hindered scaling and the management of rising product complexity resulting in several challenges for the engineering team such as:
The team realized that if Soundboks was to maintain consistency across product lines, reduce risk, and support ongoing growth, they needed an advanced PLM platform; a platform equipped with a more sophisticated ECO workflow, document control, and supply chain collaboration platform without impeding their agile culture. As Daniel put it, “The compromises we thought we could live with using our old PLM inhibited our growth. We could no longer operate in this capacity, and we needed another solution, fast.”
—Jonas Vaabengaard, Director of Project Operations, Soundboks
Soundboks evaluated several PLM solutions before selecting one that best fit their business needs. Their outsourced manufacturing model depended on robust capabilities, including secure supplier access, ECO control, and the ability to manage multilevel sourcing relationships. Based on previous experience with Arena PLM, the team knew it would align perfectly with the next phase of product growth. What stood out was Arena’s strength in secure supplier collaboration, configurability, and scalability. Jonas said, “We’re working with multiple stakeholders, multiple partners, and suppliers who deliver to other suppliers.”
“One of the main drivers for switching to Arena PLM was the ability to securely enroll suppliers,” Daniel explained. “We wanted to knowingly share only what suppliers could see, such as ECO tracking, master data fields, and sourcing relationships. These were all important and Arena gave us much more granular control than our previous system.” Jonas added, “A PLM is something you need when you work with outsourced manufacturing. Having a single source of truth gives us a level of control to confidently track and identify the specs when we need to change a supplier, find an alternative part, or onboard a new supplier for a specific subcomponent.”
Arena’s scalability was also a compelling differentiator. “Arena has offered us a way of scaling that’s easier, and we can see that we can grow on the platform,” Jonas stated. “With its maturity, flexibility, and strong history supporting growing hardware companies, Arena by PTC was the right choice.”
Soundboks wasn’t looking for a multi-month migration. With previous PLM experience and well-organized master data, the team set an ambitious timeline. Working with their Arena Solution Architect, they kicked off in late April, populated and cleaned their sandbox with master data, and pushed to production mid-May. Jonas summed it up, “It only took three weeks to migrate from our previous PLM system and get everything up and running in Arena… no insane nights or weekends. It was fast and focused.” Daniel noted that onboarding the engineering team took deliberate expectation setting: “Once we got past the first obstacle of using a new system, the team responded positively. The change order process was a big improvement, and they quickly saw the benefit.”
Arena now serves as Soundboks’ product record source of truth, supporting new product development data control, supplier management, and streamlined change processes across global teams, including engineers in Copenhagen, supply chain teams in Shenzhen, China, and contract manufacturers throughout Asia.
Arena delivers measurable improvements across Soundboks’ product development and manufacturing processes that include:
Soundboks’ engineering team is actively expanding its product lineup. The company is poised to make a little more noise in the market by delivering even more powerful Bluetooth products. With Arena PLM supporting their global product development, compliance, and supply chain processes, Soundboks is well-positioned to launch future innovations with speed, consistency, and confidence.
—Jonas Vaabengaard, Director of Project Operations, Soundboks
