By the fall of 1983 they had decided that the future likely lay in liquid-crystal displays, which were popular in digital watches. At Brown's suggestion, Nunley was dispatched to become an instant expert. Techsonic was in serious negotiations with Hitachi by early fall. The "Japanese General Electric," as it's sometimes called, had recently opened an office in a Chicago suburb and was looking to build some business. Though mystified by the use of sonar to pinpoint fish, the Japanese appreciated the development fee, as well as the $1.5-million order for 50,000 pieces.
Borrowing an innovation from camera makers, the group also decided to add an automatic mode to the fish finder, making it simpler to use. Balkcom was intent on introducing the product at the big industry trade show in July 1984. "I was planning that product as if the technology were right there," he says. "Because if it wasn't, we wouldn't be there for long, either." If this R&D effort didn't lead somewhere, the bank would certainly run out of patience. "With this," Balkcom adds, "we were putting our chips on the table."
* * *
Watch Sue Symons at work, and you'll have no trouble believing that she was once a high-school English teacher. There she sits, in a sterile white room at a long table, surrounded by men dressed in casual clothes, mostly jeans and plaid shirts. You know, one man is saying loudly, you can tell the species of fish by the angle of the transducer. No, no, no, another interrupts, you can tell by the shape that appears on the paper. Those wall-eyed pike are always poked up. Symons is quietly chomping on her tongue. They're both wrong, but that's beside the point. She's happy just to keep them talking. They're more constructive than the man who offered to buy 10 fish finders "if only you would come out on the boat with me, darlin'." Not to mention that fellow who showed up stinking of Jack Daniels.
Aah, the glamorous world of consumer focus groups. In late 1983 Symons went to an Atlanta focus group with a taupe-colored wooden model of the "mini-thing," as the company's memos referred to its top-secret product, and a short videotape showing what the screen would look like. The model, with its glued-on knobs and faces, was especially important, because Techsonic was planning to introduce a new technology. Describing it wasn't enough. Who knows what each person would be imagining? Symons passed the model around and showed the videotape. Then she asked questions, which she had prepared with Nunley's help. How would you use it? she asked. How would you describe it to a friend? Later she interviewed groups of 8 to 10, both flasher and chart-recorder owners in Boston, San Diego, Chicago, and Tampa. In early 1984 -- as the first working model was being tested in Lake Eufaula -- she moved on to Dallas and Minneapolis. Participants were paid $25 to $35 for the 90-minute sessions. She did not tell them which company had created the product.
While Symons sat in the midst of things, nodding and playing it dumb, Dyer, Huey, Nunley, and sometimes others sat behind a one-way mirror watching the proceedings. "It gets uncomfortable back there," Nunley says. "They say exactly what you don't want to hear." Some consumers, for instance, parroted competitors' negative claims about Techsonic products. All the while, Symons prods them: tell me more about that. I couldn't quite follow that. "The men spread their feathers for her," Dyer says. If they won't talk -- often the case in the yup-nope regions of the upper Midwest -- she reminds them that they are being paid for their opinions. At the end, she'll excuse herself, then scramble to the other side of the mirror to see if the others want her to ask any questions. Find out more what the guy in the red cap meant by condensation problems, one of them might ask.
Again, they heard about how much difficulty fishermen had with their fish finders. Clearly, many were using their depth sounders to find status, not fish. Looking at the model, they complained that they wanted buttons that clicked, so they could tell while wearing gloves if they had hit them.
But there were some big surprises. Going in, the executives had assumed that their new product would replace flashers. They were, after all, out to make their own Super 60 obsolete. Would you take your flasher off when you put one of these on? Symons asked flasher owners. Oddly enough, the overwhelming majority said no. Well, maybe chart owners would consider this a better value. Unh-uh, they said. "It perplexed us," Nunley recalls. "Suddenly, we didn't know what the heck we had."
Whatever they had, it looked like a surefire hit -- especially given the results of phone interviews: 46% had told Symons they would be "very" or "somewhat" interested in such a product, if it existed. By standard marketing measures, 30% ensures a successful product. Maybe fishermen wouldn't replace their current fish finder, but they apparently wanted to use the two styles together. "We heard people saying, 'It's not a chart recorder, and it's not a flasher, but it sure is neat,' " Symons says.
When she relayed her findings to Dyer, he was suspicious. "I did not want to leverage an already highly leveraged company on 48 guys saying, 'That's neat,' " he says. So Symons isolated the characteristics of those who expressed interest in buying the product. Then she plugged that into total market data.
When she was through, she had some shocking news. "You are going to sell 120,000 of these," she told Dyer. He quietly reminded her that in the company's best year, it had sold 96,280 units. How clearheaded was it to think that a completely new product, in its debut year, would outdo the Super 60? "I said, 'Sue, you're great, but there's no way,' " Dyer recalls.
