Itronix thrives on rugged competition

Tom Turner can see much of Spokane from his office; downtown, the North Side, Mount Spokane and, in the foreground, a billboard touting a four-and-a-half star review of a Panasonic Toughbook computer.

“Unrivaled” bellows the large type.

Baloney, responds Turner, chief executive officer of Itronix Corp.

Itronix makes the GoBook line of computers that, like the Toughbook, have been “ruggedized” to work despite hard use in the field under harsh weather conditions. Unlike laptops designed for the corporate road warrior, these machines are not thin, light or pretty. As the fine print on the billboard’s upper right hand corner says “Toughbooks, computers for the outside world.”

Like, right outside Turner’s window.

Only two blocks away, the billboard could not be more directly in Turner’s field of view. His computer sits on a counter along the window. If he peers over the screen, he cannot help but see the red, white and blue Panasonic sign against a backdrop of brown brick and other earth tones.

“It’s very clear that it’s aimed at my building.” he says.

No provocation intended, objects Brandi Gil, Panasonic’s director of marketing.

“We have the reputation of always taking the high road,” she says.

The genial Gil says she had no idea Panasonic’s Spokane billboard was positioned in front of Itronix. The sign, she says, is just one among many the company will lease around the country as part of a new sales campaign targeting small and medium businesses. Other signs have been posted in Texas and Maryland cities smaller than Spokane, and more will follow.

“We’re going a little grassroots here,” Gil says.

She says every manufacturer tries to exploit a good product review from a non-biased third party, in this case “Laptop” magazine in its April issue. “We fared very well,” she says, describing the testing regimen as “chill, spill, bake and shake.”

In that same issue, Gil notes, the comparable GoBook II earned just two stars.

That was months and a previous generation of GoBook ago, Turner says.

Manufacturers tend to leapfrog each other as each introduces a new product, and that’s just the case with Itronix’ recently launched GoBook III.

In the October “Pen Computing” magazine, Editor Conrad Blickenstorfer says “Itronix has clearly set new standards and upped the performance bar for the competition.”

The company has collected a portfolio of other favorable reviews from trade and consumer magazines.

Turner says what has gotten under Panasonic’s skin is the growing success of Itronix selling its laptops to the U.S. military, primarily the Army and Air Force.

From just $1 million in U.S. Department of Defense business in 1997, he says, Itronix sales this year will hit $40 million. Panasonic used to own that market.

“They’re just absolutely paralyzed,” Turner says. “We’ll just keep on taking them down.”

He notes one U.S. soldier in Iraq sent the company a letter marveling at the GoBook’s ability to keep functioning in storms of sand fine as chalk dust.

Turner says Panasonic Computer Solutions, a $1 billion unit of giant $70 billion giant Matsushita Electric Industrial, will try to use its marketing muscle to broaden the market for ruggedized products, pushing Itronix at the extreme ruggedized end of the market, IBM and other makers in the semi- or non-ruggedized products. He does not think it will work.

Nor, Turner says, does Itronix have the resources to respond directly to the Panasonic provocation. The company does relatively little advertising of any kind.

Instead, with the Panasonic billboard as an inspiration, he says, “We’ll say ‘Thank you very much. We’ll redouble our efforts.’”

Sounds like the competition is just as ruggedized as the computers, only with a longer battery life.