Sunday, March 07, 1999

Laps, legs due some relief

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Inventor confident portable computers have new perch

BY BY JOHN ECKBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer

John Troyer demonstrates the LapStand. (Dick Swaim photo) | ZOOM |

        Springdale's John Troyer never set out to invent a better mousetrap, but with his collapsible LapStand, designed to hold the standard laptop computer, that is what he has done.

        The idea for the stand came to Mr. Troyer in a Tennessee airport over Memorial Day weekend in 1997. He had been hired by a multinational company to evaluate construction equipment and was preparing to make the most of his airport layover when he rebelled. He was tired of the uncomfortable heat generated by the laptop computer that routinely rested on his knees during layovers.

        “I always felt I was being slow-cooked. I also developed leg cramps from my tip-toe stance. I just told myself that I was not going to pull the thing out until I had a place to work,” Mr. Troyer said.

        From that moment of rebellion, the company LapStand Inc. and a new consumer prod uct was born.

        This stand, which retails for $79.95, has humble roots. The prototype was fashioned from wood and hinges he bought at a hardware store. “Oh, it was an ugly, flappy thing,” Mr. Troyer said. “I went to an engineer friend of mine, gave him a small piece of the company and asked him to be my gizmo engineer.”

        The next prototype was made of metal and weighed eight pounds, but it justified firing up the company.

        From his background in engineering management, he listed criteria for his product: must weigh less than three pounds, must fold up and fit into a laptop pocket, must not trigger airport security or be able to conceal contraband and it must break down in 10 seconds or less.

        Today, Mr. Troyer believes that his product - just now on the market and available at www.lapstand.com or www.lapstand.net - is headed for a speed-of-light sales pace.

        The company can produce 50,000 units per week at Progressive Die Stamping & Metal Finishing in West Chester. LapStand, in its second year, also has a business plan that projects some whopping revenues — between $30 million and $50 million in sales the first year.

        To those who say it won't happen,Mr. Troyer has a ready reply — watch.

        “I hesitate to give those numbers because it is so large but the market potential for this product is enormous,” Mr. Troyer said.

        Progressive Tool has a big bet riding on LapStand as well, said Greg Carver, president and owner. “We've invested $250,000 in equipment for the product, presses and riveting machines, because we do believe in it,” Mr. Carver said. “If this does 10 percent of his projections, it will increase our employment by 15 to 20 people.”

        Mr. Troyer said he got a glimpse of the size of the po tential market for LapStand when he had a booth at a Computer Distributors Exhibition in Las Vegas in 1997. “I had at that point 10 pre-production prototypes and I knew going out that this thing was stunning,” he said. “There was nothing else out there. Nothing like this. So I figured one out of four or one out of five laptop users would be interested.”

        Of the visitors to the booth, he said, one-third of laptop users had no interest in the product because they always worked off a desk. Another third was slightly curious. The final third had wallets out and were ready to buy.

        “They wanted to know how much,” he said. Within months, Mr. Troyer raised start-up capital of $250,000 and directed $100,000 of that for tooling. He wants his mousetrap in every laptop shoulder bag in America, but he will be satisfied if it's only in a couple of million bags the first year.

        Already, companies like Lucent Technologies, Boeing Computer Services and two of the big five accounting firms have come calling. The four arms of the military want to know more, too.

        Dick Marchi, senior vice president/technical and environmental for the Airports Council International, believed the unit is going to be accepted by business travelers. The Washington D.C.-based airport trade association represents 150 member airports in North America.

        “You walk down the aisle of an airplane on a long flight and I have to believe that a third of the people, particularly on transcontinental flights, are working on laptops,” he said. “This would certainly make it easy to travel with a laptop.”

        The market for the stand is large and it is growing. Mr. Troyer — who claims to have “more angles than a protractor and I want all of them covered” — paid Dataquest, a San Jose research firm, for its market analysis of laptop sales.

        According to that review, national and international laptop shipments have grown from 8.5 million annually in 1995 to a projected 18 million in 1999, with 8 million going to domestic sales.

        As laptops approach the power of full desktop units, the market share is expected to increase to 26 million units shipped in 2001, the firm determined.

        One of the harshest facets of start-up was not specifically developing or manufacturing the product. For Mr. Troyer it was spending the cash. “Sometimes you feel like you are listening to water rushing down the pipes, that you are just flushing money all over the place,” he said. “My thoughts were always to be thorough. I didn't want to find myself with a great idea and no market.

        “If that happens — you've just dug yourself a big, big hole.”

       

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