Brand Reinvention ― Case History

When a sudden shift occurs in the market, how do you take a company that is heavily reliant on one market into another market?

 

Overview

Wavetek, a San Diego, CA company was founded in 1962. Wavetek was a designer, manufacturer, and distributor of a broad range of electronic test instruments, with a primary focus on application-specific instruments for testing voice, video and data communications equipment and networks.

Over the years, Wavetek’s revenues grew to approx. $100M with 50% of that coming from Department of Defense related sales. The company's stock was publicly traded on the NYSE and Wavetek was lauded as a local success story.

1989 brought severe cuts in Department of Defense spending and Wavetek sales were cut in half, as the company languished from revolving-door management changes. Finally in 1990, it was acquired by industrialist Terence J. Gooding and ROGOV Design was selected to provide strategic design leadership to position Wavetek’s new products for growth in the commercial market.

As a consequence, over seven years, Wavetek’s products emerged from each division with a holistic consistency of look, feel and user-interface designed by ROGOV. The result produced a highly desired product line identity, and became a springboard that catapulted the company on a meteoric growth path.

 

Our Design Process

ROGOV's strategic design process helped launch the company on a path of growth and enthusiastic investor attention.

 

Result

By fiscal year ending 1997, Wavetek had worldwide revenues of $155 million with operating income and profit of $20.5 million.

In 1998 Wavetek merged with Wandel & Goltermann, a German company, resulting in combined sales over $500M. Wavetek later became the name of Willtek Communications GmbH, and names like Fluke, Ideal industries and Pro-Nova also became involved. Yokogawa Electric Corporation, also entered into a capital tie-up with Wavetek Corporation.

 

 

"From product to product, ROGOV has been our partner, refining our designs to guarantee that the engineering and design of our products are compatible and complementary. The contribution of ROGOV has been one of the keys to the success of our new products and we are happy to have ROGOV's involvement with our company"

Terence Gooding - President WAVETEK 1998