GENEVA—French livery design specialist Happy Design Studio has teamed up with adhesive films-maker Adhetec and the painting expertise of General Atomics AeroTec Systems to offer a “one-stop shop” for the customization of business jet exteriors.

The partners work together using a combination of 3-D stenciling adapted to the curves of an aircraft with paint and adhesives, allowing them to create complex designs. They are hopeful of signing up new clients during EBACE 2023, Happy Design founder Didier Wolff says.

“We focus on business jets and other parts of the industry are catered to according to demand,” Wolff says, noting that the striking designs the partnership can offer mean it is ideally suited to individual business jet owners who want to project a part of their image on their aircraft and make their own decisions about design and expenditure.

“We wanted to offer a one-stop shop in which our team can take care of everything from the preliminary stages of development of the livery right through to the completion via the General Atomics paint center, using the best aspects of the products to create a hybrid model,” says Grégory Gallice, Adhetec's export sales director for EMEA, APAC and Central and Latin America.

“Today almost anything can be done with paint but it takes a lot of time and it’s very costly. By creating this hybrid model we’re going to be able to not only allow clients to create ultra-complex liveries and decorations, but also improve the cost and the timeline versus painting alone.”

Adhetec, which is already well-known in commercial aircraft exteriors, has expanded into the business aviation sector in the last 3-4 years.

Happy Design itself can work on a maximum of four jets per year as Wolff stays present throughout the process, he says. Happy Design's order book is “well-filled,” Wolff adds, although the absence of Russian clients since the invasion of Ukraine has been felt.

As for the capacity of the three new partners together, “that remains to be seen,” Wolff says. “It depends on the complexity of the aircraft.”