[brain teasers]
INSTALL YOUR OWN products.
That in a nutshell is Joel Hazzard?s answer to my question: How does Ergotron reach its goal of launching 20 significant new products for the mass market every two years?
?I go out personally and install products all the time,? he says, and he expects his employees to do the same. ?Innovation comes because you?re very connected to the end user.?
His answer surprised me, because he?s CEO of a large company now, nearing $130 million in annual revenue, with rapid expansion plans in Asia and the Pacific Rim. I thought his answer would be from the vantage point of 30,000 feet, not from two feet away from the customer.
Only five years ago he took over a sister company to Ergotron, which at the time had no products and no customers. By 2004 that company had $10 million in sales. At the request of the founder, Hazzard then combined the two companies, retired almost all of Ergotron?s products, and started churning out offerings for the mass market.
Hazzard thinks about new products constantly, I could tell. The company?s conference room is packed with its latest launches, and Hazzard stops briefly to demonstrate each one.
He invites me to see how easily this flat-screen TV with an Ergotron attachment moves up and down, or how handily that laptop sits on an Ergotron stand.
He fires questions at me about the computers, TVs and projectors I use, and I assume he does the same to any visitor.
?Do you have an LCD TV? Is it mounted on a wall? So you threw away the stand, or is it stuck in your closet somewhere? Fifty percent of those TVs come with a stand, so that?s $15 of waste for the manufacturers, and it cuts their margins,? he says.
?Just as an experiment,? he urges a bit later on, ?as you walk around, like at the airport, look around. You see thousands of applications? for Ergotron products. What if a person in a wheelchair wanted to see the day?s flight times? Wouldn?t it be great if the monitor could be lowered?
The foundation of this product-generation machine is hands-on. He urges his employees to install Ergotron equipment and observe the customer?s reaction ? and in fact requires them to do so on their first day on the job. He does the same himself, regularly.
And while of course the complete story behind building the company is complicated (read more in this issue?s Back Page feature), Hazzard?s example brings up a simple and intriguing thought:
How many ideas for new products would you get if you watched customers using what you make?
? Beth Ewen
editor and co-founder
Upsize Minnesota
bewen@upsizemag.com
