On the wall to the right of his desk are drawings of a likely new product, a specialty light, this time for picture frames. The drawings have been professionally rendered; as Adele will tell you, Noel can't draw a straight line. Maybe so, but he surely has a keen eye for opportunity -- and for brainstorming a design to the brink of perfection.
Seeking proper illumination for his framed pipe collection, Noel saw at once the many shortcomings of the incandescent picture-frame lights currently available. Nobody had to tell him to start tinkering. The light he's developed will be fluorescent. Its bulb will be energy-efficient and will last up to 10 times as long as incandescent versions. Moreover, his light will burn cool. There'll be none of the danger of an incandescent bulb's heat discoloring an important canvas. A special screen inside his fluorescent tube will make the lamp "color corrected," so pictures will appear more vivid. Noel even addressed the matter of attaching the light to the picture frame -- by cleverly sidestepping it. "Anytime you put a screwdriver in a consumer's hand you've got a lot of problems," he says. Instead of screwing to the picture frame, his light will simply rest upon it. "If you can hang a picture you can buy our light," he says, explaining that a telescoping rod carrying the light cord will be held to the wall with the same hook that supports the picture. Aah, but what about the bottom half of the cord dangling down the wall to the socket? For one thing, it's been made thinner. For another, the light will probably be packaged with a narrow length of plastic extrusion that can be painted the same color as the wall. When Noel Zeller tries out a possible advertising slogan -- "Zelco re-invents the picture frame light" -- he isn't just blowing smoke.
"Noel is constantly talking about new ideas," says Donald Duke, a Canadian importer of the entire Zelco product line. "But he doesn't just talk. He'll take an idea and work on it and work on it." With the help of a freelance product designer and a mechanical engineer, Noel tries to leave no function unconsidered, no detail untended. He wants nothing less than an industry standard, a bulletproof product immune to legitimate competition.
Not all, of course, have worked out. An ill-conceived early effort, a window-washing gadget with telescoping handle, flopped miserably. More recently, Zelco shot through $100,000 and got as far as a working prototype of a high-tech "salt detective," a pocket-size probe for measuring sodium levels in food. A retail price tag of $80 to $100 pulled the plug on that one. The Zellers didn't think it could bring in the $1 million in annual sales they now expect of new products.
For the most part, though, the hits have kept coming. The itty bitty GroLite for houseplants, introduced last fall, sold well enough to account for 11% of 1985 sales. Another design marvel, Zelco's $60 Magnificent Magnifying Mirror (it lights, magnifies, mounts on the wall, can be handheld or handle-turned to be self-supporting, plugs in or operates on batteries, folds for traveling, does everything but brush on shaving cream) chalked up 9% of total sales. With various flashlights accounting for 15% of revenues, and butane fire starters another 14%, the company is achieving its goal of putting more eggs in a larger basket. Last year, the book light tallied 42% of business, with revenues from other products totaling $5.8 million.
Though the Zellers are considering a foray into the kitchen, with an as yet undisclosed twist on cookware, they try not to stray too far from their successes. At a recent trade show, this strategy was, in effect, on display in their booth. On a desk where orders were being taken stood what Noel now refers to as "our reading group." In their distinctive, booklike packages, neatly arranged between bookends, were grouped Zelco's four versions of the itty bitty book light: the original $30 light with battery pack, AC adapter, and extra bulb; an abridged version, at $20, with no battery pack or extra bulb; a $40 international edition for travelers that converts to European voltage; and a $60 "Golden" with added features, including a telescopic arm adjustable to page size.
Continual innovation, yes, but also calculated. In stock-car racing, which Noel experienced firsthand as a teenager in Florida from inside a 1940 Ford, there is a technique known as "drafting." Close behind a speeding car lies a pull of wind, a partial free ride, that smart drivers take advantage of. In like manner, Zelco's latest editions of the book light are all drafting on the success of the original, riding on its reputation, its name, and its packaging. So, too, the bookends, which are also a Zelco product, and not surprisingly, ingeniously designed to crimp inward to hold a row of books steady when one is removed.
"Once we establish a category, we look high and low. We don't want to miss an opportunity," says Noel, hinting at more products in Zelco's reading group and probably several drafting on the itty bitty GroLite. He also speaks of another kind of fire starter, long in development, that could help anchor a third major product category.
Zelco's creativity, the competition should be warned, doesn't stop with new products or innovative packaging. Noel recently made a slight but telling change in the design of the wire racks that Zelco, like other companies, provides free to stores. These racks, often placed near checkout counters, hold products packaged on blister cards, and typically, after a few weeks, not just those of the company supplying the rack. It always bugged Noel to see someone else's product on his rack, trespassing on his turf, obviously dimming his sales of small flashlights. His solution: make his racks incompatible with standard, horizontally grooved blister cards. Next time you see a Zelco display rack, look closely. You'll see its wire prongs point north to south, not east to west. And you'll see added evidence of Noel's inventiveness -- an extra cut intersecting the vertical groove on the new Zelco blister cards. Yes, indeed, it runs horizontally.
