Death to Cool

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To prevent a mass case of the cultural bends, Angle seeded the consumer robotics group with five engineers from the toy division, and then had the team observe focus groups of ordinary people who clean things. As engineers worked their way through 20 versions of the product, they brought each iteration home for testing by spouses, friends, and neighbors. The marketing staff also auditioned Roomba in their houses and filled out surveys reflecting the average-joe perspective.

The iRobot engineers responded to the feedback with enthusiasm. "We used to talk about training users to operate the robot, and now that's something that we never want to do," says Jim Lynch, one of the chief designers of Roomba. "We have a picture of this big button that says clean. There were many times someone would grab that piece of paper and put it on the table and say, 'That's the user interface we want. That's how simple we want this thing to be.'"

The focus groups also reinforced the lesson that consumers don't like products that tax their wallets any more than ones that tax their brains. Roomba's $200 price tag is a key defense against competitors. Because only a few of Roomba's manager-engineers learned cost control at Hasbro's knee, the company's new chief financial officer, Geoffrey Clear, spends hours helping them anatomize bills of materials and pointing out where, say, an 8¢ resistor got preferential treatment over a 3¢ alternative.

Clear's hiring -- he's the company's first CFO with a portfolio broader than government contracts -- was another marker along iRobot's road to mass-market-dom. Formerly an executive at Micro-Touch and 3M, he's helping iRobot forecast demand, plan production, and perform all the other financial chores that contract engineers don't worry their pretty little heads about. The CFO also has experience preparing companies to go public -- an outcome becoming legible in iRobot's tea leaves.

In manufacturing, too, the emphasis has been on building iRobot's mass-market chops: The company hired a former Hasbro employee to help establish its Far East operations and a veteran of action-figure producer Toy Biz to run them. And in March, executive vice president Greg White, who hails from appliance maker the Holmes Group, came on board to assume the consumer-products reins and develop iRobot's brand.

Not that iRobot is smarting from its earlier expertise deficit. In fact, the company's first sallies into distribution and marketing were shrewdly executed. It launched Roomba in September 2002 -- in time for the Christmas season -- through Sharper Image, Hammacher Schlemmer, and Brookstone, relying on their appeal to gift buyers and willingness to demonstrate products. In February Roomba expanded into Bed Bath & Beyond and Linens 'n Things and, in April, Target. Those venues appealed, Angle says, because of their willingness to run tapes of the product in action, offer demonstrations, and provide other support more typical of specialty shops.

Meanwhile, a publicity blitz helped build consumer demand. Media Strategies, a Boston PR firm, pitched Roomba's story aggressively to one outlet in each print category: a newsweekly (Time), a national daily (The Wall Street Journal), a technology book (PC Magazine), and so on, sending demo versions to a few chosen reporters. On launch day Angle did 22 TV interviews via satellite from his office. Once Time and shows like Live With Regis and Kelly established that Roomba was news, iRobot swept onto the women's and bridal magazines, the favored distractions of its ultimate audience. "We even got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval," says Angle. "How retro is that?"

Yet, the deluge of Jetsonian headlines celebrating Roomba's arrival presented iRobot with an unusual challenge. The company needs Roomba to be first and foremost an appliance: an attractive alternative to uprights and dust-busters, practical to the point of mundaneness. To be seen as innovative is grand: to be a novelty is dangerous. The last thing Angle wants is for Roomba to become the Internet refrigerator of vacuum cleaners.

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."

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