Our story

“To manage and share product data for designers.”

This was the first sentence ever written about ProdLib. It was a solution to a problem the three founding members of the company, Janne Virtanen, Kim Sivonen and Eeva Liesirova, had faced.

The internet was full of BIM and CAD models – but they were all on different websites and often outdated.

How could architects and structural engineers do their work efficiently if they had to scroll through the internet for product models and specific data? How to make sure they had always organised and up-to-date information in use?

In 2013, the trio got an idea of a product data platform that could be inserted into design software.

They started to develop the idea together with Peikko Oy, their first customer. Peikko had hundreds of Revit models and over a thousand CAD files that were distributed to designers through a manual system. The system was too complicated to control and Peikko faced several cases where projects had been designed using products that were no longer manufactured.

ProdLib developed a solution for Peikko’s problem: a product library platform with which it was possible to manage and distribute CAD and BIM content centrally. Through ProdLib designers will always have the latest products in use and the required information to choose the best solutions. Manufacturers in turn receive information of actual usage of their products to support future product and content development.

The Peikko product library in ProdLib was published in 1.10.2014.

After the successful launch of the first library, things started to roll. New manufacturers joined with their own libraries and the user base started to grow fast. Today, ProdLib includes about 50 manufacturers and over a ten thousand CAD and BIM models. Already 300 000 products or product details have been inserted to projects.

Over these years, we have gotten a strong foothold in Finland. We have also put a lot of effort for expanding: first to Nordic and Baltic, then other European countries. Most of our users come from outside of Finland and many of the manufacturers are internationally remarkable companies.

Our mission is to connect manufacturers and designers through smart models and tools. We are here to make designers’ work easier by offering them high quality models and specific product information clearly organized and always up-to-date. In turn, we offer manufacturers a channel to get their product models straight to designers.