Kevin Bailey

Kevin Bailey is the CEO and President of Design 1st.

A passionate product designer and business executive, Kevin Bailey helps guide CEO’s, startups, and established companies through the maze of product development to a successful, manufacturable physical product fast.

After spending over 35 years in design, Kevin is an expert at assessing risk and opportunity when making the hundreds of decisions required to move a vision into a physical product the users will love.

Since the late 1980’s Kevin has been on the ground floor of global hardware product innovation, cutting his teeth with Bell Research Lab before moving to Nortel Networks where he worked on the first smartphone development.

After founding Design 1st in 1996, Kevin has emerged as one of the most experienced in Canada at stickhandling product development from concept to design, engineering, manufacturing, and go-to-market strategies.

As CEO and President of Design 1st, clients and staff rely on Kevin’s strategic vision to guide funding, market entry and the full suite of development decisions. The company’s results with new product development speaks for itself.

More than 1,000 entrepreneurs, start-ups, and global corporations—such as Ericsson, Motorola, Acer, Stanley Tools, and Christie Digital—have brought product ideas to life under Kevin’s guidance.

Kevin is a Professional Engineer, Angel and VC Investor and one of Canada’s leading experts at bringing new hardware products to market.