The company that brought us the computer mouse says it doesn't sell technology - it sells cool, fun, affordable products such as roll-up keyboards and a digital pen that can upload what it has written into your PC, writes Karlin Lillington. The PC is just an 'enabler' now for people to do fun orproductive things, and Logitech makes the peripheral devices ... that fill the interface space where people connect with their PC's capabilities

"The mouse has been very good for us," says Mr Daniel Borel, the elegant, Swiss-born co-founder and chairman of computer peripheral company Logitech.

And indeed it has. Unlike most companies in the technology sector, Logitech has investors smiling, having grown revenue significantly during the ongoing economic downturn. In the 2002 fiscal period ending last March, revenues rose 28 per cent to $944 million (€962 million), while profits climbed 66 per cent to $75 million. Figures were similar in 2001.

The California-based company has 4,800 employees and leads its sector. Logitech clearly has the mouse that roared.

However, the creature bestowed its beneficence entirely by accident, as Mr Borel - or "Bobo" (the nickname he acquired at 13 and which everyone in the company seems to call him) - readily admits. The company that helped get the mouse out of the research lab and onto the desktop began in 1981 as a software start-up in a chalet-style house in Apples, Switzerland - in what Mr Borel calls "the Swiss version of the California garage" in which so many Silicon Valley companies are born.

A graduate of Silicon Valley's Stanford University, Mr Borel had teamed up with another student to do what Stanford students are famous for doing - creating technology companies. And they gave the company a name that reflected its software intent. Logiciel is the French word for software, so 'logi' plus 'tech' seemed appropriate for a company based around a word-processing program.

In a moment of inspiration, they also had the unusual idea of using a mouse as the way in which the computer user would interact with the program. The only problem was that computer mice were hardly known outside of Xerox's famed Palo Alto research centre, where the concept was invented and then refined, which meant they had to arrange to manufacture a mouse to go along with the program.

When little Logitech managed to interest Japanese giant Ricoh in its software, Ricoh expected them to supply thousands of mice. "We were pushed into manufacturing," says Mr Borel.

"It took us three years to accept that because we were software engineers and didn't want to be manufacturers."

But Logitech was doing quite a good business in mice - HP and Digital were among the companies that contracted the company to make mice and the software to go with them. Logitech's mouse destiny was sealed when it approached Apple - the only manufacturer making a computer with an integrated mouse - and got a contract. They started selling mice as a retail item after 1986.

Chances are, if you bought any computer in the 1980s or early 1990s, it came from the manufacturers with an unbranded Logitech mouse. "We were the hidden partners of those guys," says Mr Borel.

Now the company's bright logo graces everything from cordless keyboards to digital cameras, mobile phone headsets and joysticks, but it's mice that built Logitech's empire. Four hundred million of them.

"If you put them tail to tail, they would go all the way to moon and back," he says with delight.

Though it has had an extremely low-profile presence here, Logitech came to the Republic to make its mice in the late 1980s, attracted by low manufacturing costs and the proximity of customers such as all-important Apple in Cork (where Logitech also set up shop). Consumers in Europe wanted products that were made in Europe, says Mr Borel, and Logitech was happy to supply its mice.

They ship them now to Dell, Compaq and Sun, among others, in Europe. They've also remained extremely loyal to Apple, releasing their products as both Mac and PC-compatible from day one.

Logitech has since based all manufacturing in Asia, but Mr Borel argues that the company has added greater value back by placing a 35-person design centre in Cork instead.

Many of the cutting-edge products shown by the company during a Dublin visit recently went through the elaborate design process in Cork. Mr Borel also says the Cork centre is "clearly an area where expansion can take place" as they further develop European markets for Logitech products, though he won't be more specific.

Design is crucial for a company targeting everyone from the average computer user to the high-tech, gadget-conscious consumer.

This year Logitech is showing lots of curvy black matt and metal surfaces, as well as Apple iMac-inspired, see-through plastics. Among the more unusual items are little flexible, roll-up keyboards for use with a Palm Pilot, steering wheels for computer driving games, and a digital pen that knows what it has written and can upload that information into a PC.

"You don't sell technology. You sell cool, fun, affordable products at the end of the day," says Mr Borel - more than 100 million of them this past year.

For the first time, Logitech will be selling those products directly to the Irish market, a place it has ignored in the past with the reasoning that it was perhaps too small.

"It's the one market we haven't done as much in as we'd like to," says Logitech general manager for Europe Mr Frank Morley.

Now, the company says it has realised the Irish market is actually full of ideal consumers with an interest in technology, computer gaming and gadgets - and pockets still relatively full of spending money.

Those are the people who keep fuelling Logitech's rise and rise - consumers who aren't ready to upgrade their pricey PCs yet again, but who get a thrill from adding a relatively inexpensive peripheral such as a mouse, joystick or cordless keyboard at under €100.

The PC is just an "enabler" now for people to do fun or productive things, and Logitech makes the peripheral devices that let people do them, says Mr Borel - the devices that fill what he calls "the interface space" where people connect with their PC's capabilities. That's a change from the past, when "everything was the power of the PC."

"But today, people don't buy new PCs. They buy what we do." Logitech's growing visibility clearly gives him deep satisfaction.

"People talk about the last mile," he says. "We want to be the last inch between the consumer and the digital world."