LOGAN -- Iomega Corp. has been riding a business roller coaster of astounding achievements and disastrous downturns.
But one constant key to success for the manufacturer of computer data storage products has been international sales, a company official said Thursday.David Hellier, Roy-based Iomega's vice president of America sales and marketing, spoke to business executives and students during the 19th annual International Business Seminar at Utah State University.
Hellier said Iomega was founded in 1980 by a group of engineers who produced a high-speed, high-capacity computer drive called Bernoulli.
But by the early 1990s, Hellier said, the company's margins were eroding. Its executives focused too heavily on the product, at the expense of the customer, he said. And almost all of Iomega's revenues came from U.S. sales.
In 1994, the company decided to go in a different direction. Kim Edwards -- a man Hellier said did not know much about computers but was great at marketing -- was hired as chief executive officer.
Iomega's research showed that customers wanted a disk that was a little smaller than the Bernoulli, but still capable of holding 100 megabytes of information. And they wanted to pay less than $200 for it.
In 1995, the Zip drive was launched based on those desires. Zip accounts for about 70 percent of Iomega's revenues now, Hellier said, and it immediately drew interest from computer users all around the world.
"We made a conscious decision that, to be successful in the long term, we had to go beyond the United States," he said.
International sales helped Iomega's revenue grow from $140 million in 1994 to $1.7 billion in 1997, Hellier said. International revenue grew 1,400 percent to $700 million during that period.
He said Iomega was able to grow internationally for many reasons.
Based on its research, Hellier said, the company decided to focus first on serving the Asia-Pacific and European markets.
Iomega established regional offices in Singapore and Germany, giving the company new bases of operations.
Then Iomega had to decide how it would market itself overseas. Research in the United States showed that people used the word "stuff" to refer to their stored computer data, so the company based its marketing campaign on that concept.
The word "stuff" had some negative connotations in other nations, Hellier said, but Iomega decided to proceed with the marketing campaign worldwide so it would have a consistent concept.
And the company's logo, a stylized white letter "i" on a red background, was consciously designed to look similar to the international symbol for information.
"We wanted to be able to extend this brand to be international," Hellier said.
Hellier said the company then established regional distribution centers for its drives, and it set clear country priorities for sales: Germany, France and the United Kingdom in Europe; and Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong in the Asia-Pacific region.
But Iomega found it difficult to keep that focus, Hellier said.
"There were so many opportunities out there for our product, and so much growth potential, that there was an opportunity to try to do everything," he said.
"But you can't do everything. We tried to, and it really cost us for about six months."
Iomega has regained its focus in the last few months, Hellier said. Jodie K. Glore was just hired as president and CEO to replace Edwards, who resigned earlier this year.
And Iomega announced last month that it plans to open a 100,000-square-foot Zip manufacturing plant in Roy.