Dyer and Nunley then had worked out their own predictive models based on, well, uh, good old-fashioned Eufaula horse sense. A new product would probably sell one quarter as much as the old product in its first year, Dyer decided. So his prediction settled at 25,000. Nunley felt 17,000 would be more in order. In the spirit of true fishing chums -- which they weren't -- they compromised at 22,000.
A month or so before the July show Dyer and Huey unleashed a campaign to bait the distribution network. Huey, along with others at his agency, had sat and watched videotapes of the focus groups. Then they had come up with the slogan Bridging the Gap -- between flashers and charts. It was a classic marketing ploy that came straight out of the focus groups: consumers perceived the new LCR (Liquid Crystal Recorder) as offering paper-chart quality at flasher prices. "We created a gap, and we filled it," Huey says proudly. In June 1984 he bought special double-gatefold ads in the industry's top two trade magazines. Neither of the magazines had any idea how to print them. Huey had to bring in examples of auto-company ads. "The creation of a new generation," the headline read. The copy noted almost point for point problems that had been raised at focus groups. Techsonic also spent $85,000 on a new black-and-yellow trade-show booth, with closing rooms, overhead lights, and -- borrowing a ploy that Dean had used to sell the Super 60 -- a unit submerged in an aquarium.
On July 26, 1984, at 10:00 a.m., when the American Fishing Tackle Manufacturers Association show opened in Atlanta, the Techsonic booth was "wall-to-wall people," Nunley recalls. The company even held a press conference, and more than 300 reporters showed up. Straining to be heard over the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme, Huey presented market research that showed why the LCR could not fail. "We wanted everyone to know that we were not taking a swing in the dark," Balkcom says.
They took the industry by surprise. "It was a tremendously big breakthrough," recalls Dave Ellison, editor of Fishing Tackle Retailer. "The technology changed overnight."
As did life in the headquarters at Eufaula. The factory expanded to two shifts. Then three. Instead of 50,000 pieces, Dyer was begging Hitachi for 150,000 pieces -- in half the time. Even so, he had to ration product. As soon as possible, the company built a 17,000-square-foot facility next door. By the end of fiscal 1985 Techsonic had sold 140,000 units. Sales hit $31 million, more than two and a half times 1984 sales. Techsonic had broken the grip of the Super 60; it represented only 25% of unit sales.
Dyer figured the company had one year before the market would be flooded with imitations. He was determined "not to start believing our own BS," and he knew exactly how to prevent that. "Now," he says, "we had a secret weapon."
By spring 1985 Symons was back on the road, holding focus groups with people who had bought LCRs. Using names from warranty cards, she traveled to all different regions. "We were stupid enough to think that if this worked for us once, it could work for us again," Dyer says.
To follow up on the LCR, they handed product development back to the people who seemed to do it best: consumers. This time, they heard one comment surfacing again and again like the shark from Jaws. I have trouble telling the fish from the rocks, fishermen complained, so can you put them in red? "I thought it was a silly thing to say," Nunley recalls. "The first few times, I dismissed it as some goofball." But it became impossible to ignore. At some groups, one person would suggest it, and other voices would agree.
Fish in red? At the company's annual retreat with Hitachi, the Japanese supplier showed them a double-layer polarized display that could indeed color fish red. Symons returned to the focus groups to test some working models. Should the red dots flash? Should they be different shapes for different fish? What about a small fish in red, a bigger fish in black, and the biggest fish in both? No, consumers said, we want the bottom in black, the fish in red, and the biggest fish in both. This time, in 800 phone interviews, 32% said they were very or somewhat interested in the product -- still enough to make it hot stuff.
Once again, Huey used the focus groups to create ads. The copy, for instance, referred to the 4-ID, as the new product was named, as a "red-dot" unit. In truth, the recorder shows tiny red squares, but consumers in focus groups kept calling them dots.
Not surprisingly, more and more competitors were jumping into the market. Where there had been 10 manufacturers a year earlier, there were now 25. They were lured, if you will, by the prospect of a growing market. For nearly three years, about 50% of the people who purchased LCRs were first-time buyers. "After the liquid crystal was introduced, the market just exploded," says Bill Bogan, vice-president of marketing at Computrol Inc., which started making Bottom Line fish finders in 1985.
The 4-ID enabled Techsonic to keep its lead. Spending about $2 million to advertise in such mainstream publications as USA Today, the company sold more than 100,000 units its first year. Techsonic finished fiscal 1986 with a "very profitable" $56 million in sales -- $1 million more than Dyer had estimated the whole market size to be just five years earlier.
Pretty soon, competitors came out with variations on the fish-in-red theme. Some had dots that flashed. Others offered fish-shaped drawings. "We saw margins starting to erode because of the me-too products," Balcom says. One model, for example, that sold for $319 in 1985 sold for about $200 by 1987. No one has to guess where Techsonic looked for new ideas. "We listened to them again," Dyer says. "Hey, it hasn't led us wrong yet."
