Eclectic Electronics
Device Improvements
Huh?: Covering standard products like mice, keyboards and other types of necessary computing hardware, these “vanilla” accessories, are the most conventional, but also the most widely used.
Consider: The idea isn’t just to give end-users a new keyboard or mouse, but one better than their current device so the product will be used. There is a wide array of bell-and-whistle features that can boost a product’s perceived value, like wireless connections or additional buttons, but it’s also important to consider the device’s performance as a whole. As Mary Crug, co-owner of Direct Connections Inc., Redmond, Wash., explained, “What [distributors] really need is to ask some questions and find out what’s on the inside.” She continued, “Especially on wireless mice, if you use a low-grade chip to build that mouse, you’ll burn through tons of batteries. So you may be saving 50 cents or a dollar, but your customer or the end-user is going to be very unhappy with having to replace batteries constantly.”