Logitech: The Secret to 45 Years of Innovation

[Laughter] [Music] Paul always suspected king crab was more of a title than a [Music] name and he wants to be the first human to bend the claw because one day the Crustaceans will rise and only Paul will be [Music] spared foresight's a wonderful thing invest in Innovation and including 3D printing with opto welcome to the show James so how are things very well actually Hayden I'm I'm really good I'm actually over in lovely cork at the moment in isand in one of our in our headquarters out here so yeah had a really nice week so far the Sun is out it's a lot of blue sky so really really good really doing well to this week yeah great yeah we've got lovely weather here too we're based in in the UK and London by Liverpool Street if you know it so yeah I mean thanks again for coming on the show really pleased to have you on the show and we'll get into Logitech the the business the strategy looking ahead as well but I just want to start for particularly those listeners unfamiliar with what Logitech do and the products you have available can you give us just a brief overview of the product Suite to kick us off wow that's a that's a great question and it's funny actually because logitech's probably and my 35 years working Logitech is probably the most known company to everyone to to not know Logitech is is quite funny in fact I think this is the first company my mother has actually recognized that I work for because she's got a very old mouse so so everyone knows I think where Logitech are but just for I suppose started we started about 45 years ago actually actually this the founders were actually trying to create a way to wirelessly connect devices and they ultimately invented the mouse so that's what they had and they started The Accidental Mouse company we talk about but we've since gone on to make any sort of peripheral which connects the human being to the digital world so whether that's keyboard mouse any really sort of web cameras those kind of things but as we move forward and we start to do more businessto business type connectivity and Equipment it's really the same Mantra is really how do we how do we connect an individual to a compute platform or to a digital world so that's what we are we've been going as I said for 45 years um based in Switzerland and the us but we Swiss company to start which people often don't know yeah been going for a long time and got a really good you know user base and and partner base as well yeah fantastic no I think it's really useful context and we'll get into the specifics of your product offering uh in Du course particularly interested to hear how the companies kind of transition from a potentially more B Toc focused business to B2B but we'll get into that in just a second what we what we tend to do with all guests on the show is just get a bit of an understanding of their background so if you could help us out with that give us an idea of your previous experience that there's some notable names in there as well AWS Sumo logic blue jeans Network how has that experience prior to Logitech informed your current approach yeah a lot I mean if if you take the every experience you have is building to what you're going to become in your professional life and I started out started out leave University and sort of bumped my way into the IT industry really installing x25 Terminals and doing all that kind of stuff and then I was in the it business as we started do local area networking and as that evolved into different sort of dialup I I ended up at Cisco Systems actually for for a long time I was there for 17 years then I decided to leave there and go into other companies in I really have always looked for the change in what was happening in in the it space I was through the internet really enjoyed that component and then then into software and software as a service I ran WebEx as you may know blue jeans networks was another area and then sum logic was a real data analytics company so it was an interesting aside uh AWS because I always wanted to work for an Amazon or a Microsoft or a Google you know an AWS came up and it's a you know great company really enjoyed that and then I'm now you know as you know in in Logitech running the B2B business and I suppose the things I've learned really is probably one of the B biggest thing is always keep your focus on the customer and you know as I've been going through the technology as we've had these technological shift it's always really keeping a focus on what the customer needs and if you're focused exclusively on that you'll always work out what you can do as a business so and I think I've always been of that sort of mindset that okay what does this mean for my customer is always a way I look at it and it's perfect for Logitech because logitech's customer is the very end User it's right as the human meets the digital world so that if I just keep thinking always about how's that going to affect my customer then I think all my years of experience have probably led me into a good place right now with Logitech yeah absolutely you you referenced some of the uh key players in this industry so I'm going to use that as a segue to talk about the competitive landscape in this space the Enterprise collaboration space in particular is is highly competitive or at least it seems so from the outside uh with companies like Microsoft Cisco you've already referenced them as well Polly as well they're all offering rival Solutions in this space so give as a sense of logitech's biggest competitive advantages across both the b2c and B2B offerings you know I think the thing for me that gets me and it's and I've been here 14 15 months now and I think the biggest thing for me is the fix we're absolutely fixated on the customer as I've just been talking about and to have that relationship and it's this you know same as my you know my joke about my MTH she's got a relationship with Logitech because he's got a very old sort of yellowy mouse that she's used for years but it's that it's that constant looking for what the customer needs next and how the customer evolves and that's a very different approach than I've ever had before in my in my past that's more about how do we design a product that hopefully there's a customer for litech is very much how does a customer get the most out of technology and what do we do to make that interface work as smoothly as possible it's it's this very very competitive space the the collaboration space probably accelerated that level of competition during covid when everyone was needing to collaborate remotely so more and more Innovation happens at the time you go back before covid and you really had blue jeans weex and maybe a little bit of zoom and it was really at that space where everything just exploded and we're on a platform today which I haven't used before but there're now lots and lots of platforms but for me that that sort of side of it whether it be teams or Google meets or WebEx or any of those other platforms they're only really as good as the interface so as long as you can see me and you can hear me then actually the software in the background has really changed so we're we're at the peripheral company so that's all we're trying to do now so the difference in competition between a you know a poly or an HP or or whatever and a Cisco Hardware compared to the software is very different and actually the software companies who provide the software that that do this type of communication are partners for us because we're trying to enable more and more people to use zoom or meet or or teams or any others are out there we're trying to make them use it in the best way possible you know clearly with the intention of everyone joining a digital meeting can be seen and heard accurately and that's kind of our Mantra so it makes us slightly different from the others I also think that you know we we're unique in the fact that we touch the human being in so many different ways which I don't think any of the others do so if you're like we are we're a gaming company we create peripherals for gamers so actually when when you go home and you want to you know people aren't watching television so much with their families in while they're actually playing games and we've got the Logitech G Series and and we've got steering wheels and simulat simulation products which allow people to connect in a gaming environment we have a music range of products with Ultimate Ears so we're again people are streaming their music to our Ultimate Ears Brands and then they're using our technology to communicate with their families and then they're using similar technology maybe slightly more professional style technology to communicate at work so I don't think any other company there isn't any other company that has the portfolio of solutions that we do yeah fantastic I'm glad we touched on the breadth of the uh product portfolio there's there's dig into that now I've picked out a few kind of key examples but we can expand on those of course so the first one I picked out was your rally series um it set a high bar I think for the Enterprise video Solutions Market what's next in terms of innovation particularly in the video and audo and audio sorry technology space yeah the the R Bar did and I think that was again that was again connections and it was more and more in the video world and I was noticing that people needed an easier way to communicate and creating a rally bar you should set a high bar but it's actually called the rally bar you know we started that and it was a really it it's been a massively successful uh product and there's a there's a suite of products there as well and actually the very latest is the rally board 65 so it's a 65 in purely integrated board that we now launched we launched it um only a month or so ago and we're at ISC with it you know the Integrated Systems Europe conference that a month or so ago and we just launched that there and it's it's a phenomenal device and if you look at it it's not just the what you know a bar which you can attach to a screen and be in a room but it's a it's almost a solution it's a touchcreen so it's you know it's a whiteboard as well but it moves around and it can we can uh actually move it into a different location and it can create a a virtual meeting room or by itself so there's a a lot of Technology that's come from that and what we're building in there is going to lead to further products no doubt The Innovation that we're showing as we mve from the rally bar as well as into the rally board we've made some announcements around that as well which will get us into different areas I would say the main focus of us is to make sure that we can digitally enable any space in the building so if you're in a small huddle room or a massive meeting room Logitech wants to be your partner to be able to activate that room to allow people in that room to communicate with people who are not in that room and to do that in the best way possible so yeah rally was one set of products then the rally board comes up we've got a number of different items I'm sitting here with some of our in one of our demo rooms here I'm sitting here with a number of different products around me which we can can touch on a little bit later but I'm sure too much techy will just turn over everyone's interest off on this call no absolutely no yeah um I we're certainly open to a bit of product detail that there's no problem at all with that but you you touched on a really interesting point there which is you'll kind of move into room monitoring tools I I saw them kind of grouped by that label um you know you've got stuff like room booking room usage data meeting room management as well well is that just a further extension of the strategy that you're kind of speaking to there give us a sense of how that kind of road map has evolved yeah I think there it's a it's a good question and and this is this is down from we could integrate this into the sort of hybrid work conversation and how people are using spaces and how they and and I think it's before covid people were used to hybrid working that wasn't what happened covid stopped hybrid working and we all work from home so it's a very different thing so now we're looking and where where technology is now is looking how to enable people regardless of the space they're in and that's easily translated into real estate utilization which is really one of the key topics for businesses right now is their space that they have that you many office spaces they have or however many desks they can put in a room that isn't going to be the solution that that you know desks in a building it's going to be how do you enable every space to have ability for people to meet and collaborate but also to dial people in call people into those meetings as well and those extra tools you've talked about environmental monitoring is one of those or room booking systems is actually telling us how the business is how the how the how the um the real estate is being utilized by the individuals who work there so if I can tell how often the room is booked but more importantly how often the room is booked and then let go because they didn't Shar to the meeting or instead of an hourong booking they left after 15 minutes if I can understand that in a better way then I can make more use out of my space which as I said Real Estate utilization is the key similarly if I do some environmental monitoring and I know that one of my rooms is just basically a bit too cold and people choose not to go in there it gives me an idea of why don't people go in there what's going on and I can look up and I can look up in a much greater level of details level of oxygen in a room which hasn't got any Windows well if someone's in there for a two or three hour meeting they're going to be pretty tired pretty exhausted so we need to look at how we set out that room and how it's set up and I think that extends right across the business from breakout areas to small huddle rooms to interview onetoone type rooms right into the boardroom and all we're doing all the time is looking for different ways we can utilize technology to enable those rooms going forward and that's that's how I think the industry is changing and that's probably the the top conversation I have right now with customers is about how they make the most use out of their infrastructure which includes people's homes because I do think I think hybrid work is still extremely valid I think we hearing Lots in the Press about demanding people to go back to work 3 days a week or 5 days a week or 4 days a week that's really missing the point the point is if someone's working from home how do you enable them as much as possible to be as involved as possible into the daily activities so we look at all of those aspects of real estate utilization and try to enable them for the business yeah okay yeah really interesting I hadn't planned to ask this but to what exent are you able to see the data is there any feedback coming from the applications and the soft uh sorry the Hardware that you're putting out because I imagine if there was you'd be getting access to some pretty useful data that you could then use to inform your further product development or is that not really yeah we don't we don't tell information that privileged or private information so that but to have the feedback to the IT department or the real estate department to say that room's never used for them to be able to look at it and go into that room and say why is it never used because I don't know there's no I don't know there's a brick wall behind the window so now one can see anything so it's really miserable place to be okay well let's adapt what that room turn that room into a storage room you know and they're able to adapt based on monitoring I think it's a really useful thing and as I said that's what really being asked for if you've got a if you've got a big space how do you use it the most effective way is it better as a breakout room where people will go the old Californian bean bag you know can of Coke and sit there talking in different huddles you know is that the right way to use it or is it as a formal boardroom which probably is only used a couple of times a week so that sort of monitoring I think is really important yeah fantastic makes a lot of sense well um I I imagine um the company's focus is often split between hardware and software at least uh that's something that you would have had to think about maybe historically and as the way I understand it as well logitech's uh product offering has been more Hardware focused traditionally than it was software but give us a sense of firstly whether that characterization is true uh and secondly how you're expanding specifically your software applications I think we would we would keep the line we're software enabled Hardware I think we're design Le software enabled Hardware as our tagline so I don't really think of us seeing it as two different things you know in reality we we're not trying to provide the SAS the software of service solution which provides a video service not trying to do that but we have a massive Department of AI Engineers it's a bad time we got to AI right in this conversation but we have ai Engineers who are developing our cameras so I'm using a webcam today just because of where I am but our cameras are observing the room and identifying the human being in the room and making sure when that human being decides to talk that the camera zooms into that and perfectly frames that individual and adjusts the lights and and and the sound so we appropriate hear and see that person that's software that's proper software you know as I said really brilliant team of AI Engineers actually some based here that are doing that all the time then we have the software we mentioned actually looks and collects the information the environmental monitoring or the usage of different tools and stuff so we've got a number of different ways we use software but yeah Hardware is enabled by the software it's not just we we're providing this dumb stuff that you know doesn't have any hardware in fact we do quite a lot of software and we've got probably more software Engineers than Hardware actually so you know it's it's m a huge focus of our yeah fantastic well yeah as you say you brought it up and it is about time that we got on to AI I'm Keen to understand I mean that was a good example of how kind of AI is inbuilt within some of your uh products week but maybe give us a broader sense of just how you're leveraging AI within I don't know meeting experiences viice automation smart room setup give us a broader sense of how Logitech are leveraging this technology yeah that that's definitely one of them so we've got um you know you could look up a site for instance is one of our products which we do this um what I I sort of described it just then about the observing a room and I think it's really important that word observing so the camera isn't switching based on who spoke it's looking and trying to identify the shoulders and head of these individuals in a room so and then trying to zoom in on those people when they when they speak and bring them to the front of the meeting so there's that component and then there's of course the sound component there's a hell of a lot of sound calculation that you need really good software to do so we're constantly making sure you know when you when you're seen in a meeting is really important but when you're heard in a meeting is very important so how do we use Ai and software and Technology to make sure that happens it's another obviously Keen part of what we do uh and then some real basic really simple stuff like you know if you take one of the Logitech mouses you mice mouses mice you can program a button on it and I can I can go into my mouse set up at home that I can take an email I can cut and paste an email press the button and it will bring up an AI tool I won't mention which one and it'll ask it to respond to that in an email format or I can actually change it to be a text format and I can just literally by the click of one button on Mouse I've completely integrated into an AI tool and it's just programmable it's just making it easy so you don't have to go and open a new window cut and paste and you can just have a very simple interface that way again all we're trying to do is make life a bit easier when you're trying to use technology and that's I suppose the job of the peripheral is to make that connection a lot easier for the human being and that's that's what we focused on yeah absolutely okay well I'm going to use this juncture to uh I think focus on a really kind of important point about logitech's kind of business model I suppose the business and the products that you offer a platform agnostic we kind of touched on that a couple of times already so you know Logitech Works across Microsoft team zoom Google meet for example what maybe give us a sense of what the opportunities are of being PL platform agnostic but also some of the challenges that come with let's go for the challenges obviously you've got some big companies doing this now you know and they're pretty huge compan and obviously they'd like everyone to use their particular software tool but again we we need that we need to be agnostic because because that's not what the customer wants and that's what we we're thinking so if the customer wants to use a different all then we're not in a right place if we're dictating what the customer does so so that's the ideal if I'm happen to want to use I can use blue jeans now because it's turned off but if you happen to want to use blue jeans then I should enable that person to use blue jeans if I wanted to use WebEx or or Zoom or or any of the other tools out there teams or me to make sure I say them all I should be allowing that to happen and more than that I should be making it as easy as possible to use one of those tools so I think being agnostic is the right thing for the customer and it goes back to what I said at the beginning I think being fixated on the customer is the right way to be the difficulties are obviously you're always going to have a bias from someone that's providing that software they're always going to want you to use their software so we have to be adaptable it means we have to do more work more integration work um but I think that's the right thing for us to focus on because as I said if we lose that Focus we lose what is inherently very Logitech which is it's it's about the consumer it's about the customer and it's about the um how we attach that customer to technology yeah fantastic well let's try and cover off some kind of key applications I suppose of this technology I'm interested to understand the key industries that are using your technology giv us a sense of whether you know you've got a lot of adoption in health care Finance education give us a sense of where their application is used most yeah I mean it really I mean this is the thing about Logitech 45 years old right so it's used everywhere I mean it's IM massive we have incredible growth at the moment in some verticals which around education really interestingly have a big growth in education public sector and there this several reasons for that but I think it's a change in the way people are being educated and we've got a lot of room systems now we do a lot of work because maybe this is a bit of a hangover from the pandemic maybe a bit of a a hangover from distance learning how it was introduced so now lecturers want to be connected to video cameras which actually track them around the room and they can share content so they need that ability Educators want to use technology like iPads and other tablets to connect to their students so we need to enable those tablets we make technology around that so that's that's absolutely massive for us at the moment but then you you have to go back to your question and say well who doesn't use a keyboard or a mouse or a webcam really every industry uses it now we have lots of different Technologies around that we have a number of different webcams loads of different Ms we have a really really nice set of ergonomic type products which are for people who are working from home who want who don't necessarily have the best chair they don't have the best setup but we want to make sure they've got the right ergonomic setup so their their interface the computer is is right we have a an and huge range of products there and um yeah and then across all businesses more we use um you know obviously webcams and the more people come back in and are using more of these type of tools we we're selling all those products and then as I said the environmental reasons and real estate utilization means that everything into a building we're now focused on so really it's any time anytime a human being is interfaced into the digital world is where we're trying to make that connect from work so our focus is continually growing our Innovation and the speed of innovation within l is incredible and and it's brilliant to see it feels like we're always releasing a new product and really nicely about us as well is we don't seem to end of Life Products very much we we're not really into that so we've got some of our biggest products and and most successful products are 7even to 10 years old and that's excluding mom's my mother's 25y old mouse you know that we really have products which last a long long time because again we're not inventing products and trying to find a market for them we're listening to customers and developing products for them need to stop supporting them or turning them off unless something changes that we've got to but it's generally how do we find the next way that a human being wants to interact yeah yeah interesting a couple of questions on that then you've mentioned that kind of customer centricity um that's obviously evident at at Logitech how how do you make sure that's the case like what goes into the product kind of research process that ensures that the customer is at the heart of a new product idea or a new innovation I think I mean you'd have to along to one of our centers and have a look I mean the focus on design for our our Engineers is incredible I mean from and we're all from showing them at shows now we show all the latest mice one of the mice here not very good for radio but you know the the amount of detail that goes into making sure that that Mouse is absolutely perfect in terms of the way the bones are are being Twisted as you're holding on to your mouse if you if you're there for a number of hours using the mouse you know the thought process that goes behind that is unparalleled I've never seen anything like it so we're constantly thinking about how the customer is is um connecting and what they need and how that enduser is going to be affected by what we do and then we have the environmental point which is then the amount of recycled products we use on low carbon aluminum in most of our products I think 75% of our products are now using postc consumer um recycled Plastics in our products so we're constantly thinking about what's also really important for our customers so not just how do we make those connections work better and how do we make them easier to use but actually it's really important for our customers to see Recycling and that part of our um our ethos really front to Center so they can they can look at how we're going about creating products and and having products last for a decade and and that's important for them so not only how they use but actually how they um what they think about Logitech as as a company yeah absolutely and I just want to revisit an earlier point you made which was about the breadth of your customer Pace um I imagine from kind of an efficiency point of view you don't want to have to produce you know a thousand versions of one particular product type to suit all of the disperate types of clients that you do have so how do you ensure kind of scalability for all of your different products to ensure that they do apply for businesses of all sizes yeah that's a great great question as well I personally have five mice maybe and I know when the products we're looking at now I can see myself having more in the future because they're just used for different things so as I said if you're an AR use a mouse for very different thing but if you're a traveling architect and now you're going to be in a coffee shop you don't want to take the same Mouse with you and on the same at home I have my master 3s and it's an absolutely perfect device for me but when I travel actually I use a really awful looking bright yellow travel Mouse I can't remember the name of it but it's because I can find it in my briefcase and I can look in and find it quickly and it's it's a great little tool but so I I generally use for what I need and I think that's how again we're looking at as a as a as a business it's not just just one use for everything it's actually how do our customers need do our customers need a mouse on the go do they need an ergonomic version do they need a gaming version Look at our gaming micee the speed and reaction time of a gaming mouse compared to what you're happy with you just in your business world they're very different products so we constantly innovate you look at the the headsets that we have on the gaming side amazing things and and even the keyboards and and what we do on the gaming side things it's very different from our business side so I don't think we have a limit to how many products we'll have in one category I think it will decide will decide based on the requirements of the customer and if we need another one then we'll create another one if we've got the demand there yeah okay fantastic uh one question on on finances and then we'll finish the interview by looking ahead uh to understand you know what's next for Logitech but finances first Logitech recently reported I think it was a 7% increase in Q3 sales so that's uh taking the total to 1 Point 34 billion and it raised the four year outlook for fiscal year 2025 as well can you just give a top level sense of the factors that drove that strong performance in the quarter as the workplace evolves and as technology evolves we play a massive role in that connection and and I think our Market's just growing as people are changing the way they work you know there's some fundamental shifts as we said hybrid working real estate utilization all those things are fundamental shifts in technology and that is our job that's what we do as that shift continues and people change the way they work we'll just keep expanding and keep connecting and as these Trends come in and AI you know which obviously followed the internet as a massively great change a big change AI is another big change I think that's a again what we'll just we'll just create products that allow people to connect to that and and utilize that type of technology so the growth is this is you know it's connect our growth is I suppose connected to the rate of change of it in itself so as more and more enablement is created within it and it services and software the more likely we'll have more products to build in order to connect people to that uh that compute yeah yeah absolutely one interesting space or potential kind of area for further growth to Logitech perhaps in the future is the AR and VR for collaboration space some companies are already experimenting in this space um as well does Logitech see a future in immersive workplace experiences yeah we have with the um yeah we've got with I don't know if you've seen our product the Inc product which we can actually you can put a VR headset on and actually draw into space so actually we've already creating products for so because again it's an interface right so I think virtual is going to expand and it's going to get better I don't know if if was quite comfy yet putting such a big headset on but they they'll get smaller over time and it'll get more and more use I was put on the other day and it's it's great now you can see out there but I can take my Logitech ink pen and I can draw in the air and I can you have seen some things on YouTube and stuff people designing cars on them and and it's amazing things you can do with this and I again I think that's and the accuracy of using that pen in the virtual world is amazing and when you've had to go of it you just kind of think of more and more things you can do from just artwork literally drawing in space or you know design work which I think is a real fundamental so I see that really growing I think meeting rooms as well I think that I can see that happening in the future I can see us sitting around a table with a headset on and some people actually being sat with us and others dialing in and being virtually sat I can see that and envisage that now and the technolog is there to do it it's now where people are comfortable sitting you know four of you in a room with these big headsets on and two join virtually it's are we ready for that yet possibly not now but I think we will be in the future and I think it's a sensible thing to keep a lookout for no product announcement but certainly that's certainly something you see it makes sense doesn't it it's sort of you know they thought now we used to say it a decade ago one my CEO at Blue Jeans used to say you know one day I'll be able to send an avatar to my meeting for me and that sounded ridiculous at the time absolutely what did he mean what on Earth you mean but I can send an AI bot to a meeting now and if it's a regular meeting like my forecast review the AI tool will know exactly the questions I'm looking up for answers for so it's very feasible that that I could replace I could send versions of me into my regular meetings to collect the information I'm usually up to so then you sort of see that changing and that could easily be how a meeting becomes a virtual meeting and how people are coming in and then you got to decide are we seeing the real person or we seeing the virtual person the II AI enabled person huge amounts have changed and it's quite exciting I I you know as I said to you at the beginning I've been around in this industry for a long time and I'm always really excited about the big changes I said I love this change that we went through with the internet I love what we're doing with AI right now and I can't wait to see the next thing that's going to happen yeah fantastic well I think that's the perfect insight to end the interview on I think it just leaves me to say thank you very much James for joining us on the show it's been a real pleasure will thank you ad great to spend time with you

2025-03-13 03:03

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