Mouse Pads Proliferate Profitably Sales Blossom As Companies Seek New Ways To Distribute Their Advertising Messages

Looking for ways to promote his company’s new rotary saw blades, Dave Fortin considered having Frisbees printed with the firm’s logo or getting some electronic greeting cards that sounded like a saw when opened.

Then he remembered that his clients all use personal computers and decided a mouse pad would be perfect. He even designed it like a rotary blade, round with 22 spike points.

“We were looking for something that is a novelty item that our customers could use and would stay around for a while,” said Fortin, merchandise manager for Raleigh, N.C.-based Cooper Tools, maker of Nicholson saw blades.

“They get a million pens and pads,” he said. “We were looking for something that would have that kind of lasting power.”

Thousands of companies have gotten the same idea, turning the mouse pad into one of the most popular items sold by advertising novelty companies these days.

“I’m inundated with them,” said Herb Edelstein, a data networking consultant in Potomac, Md. “It’s moving out from just the technology vendors into much more general advertising because everybody uses a computer.”

There is no precise market research on mouse pads, apparently dismissed by statisticians because of their ubiquity. But the Advertising Specialty Institute, a promotional products industry group, informally estimates a doubling of mouse pad sales both this year and last.

Several large manufacturers said their business grew even faster in 1993 and 1994, but more competitors have since jumped in. The ASI counts 116 mouse pad makers.

The most basic are simply a colored piece of foam rubber, in thicknesses from 1/16th- to 1/4-inch thick. More common are versions made with Neoprene, the stuff in diving suits, that are topped with polyester and printed with full-color graphics and even photographs.

The most elaborate are cut in special shapes.

“We’re in the process of doing one shaped like a double burger,” said Mike Meath of Precision Line Inc., in Plymouth, Minn.

Other variations have built-in calculators, transparent pockets to stow a photo or another document and inch-high wrist rests in the front. Office suppliers sell $20 mouse pads topped with leather and ready for a monogram.

And some consumer gift catalogs offer to convert a person’s photograph into a mouse pad for $30.

With the growing use of the World Wide Web as a marketing tool, companies from the makers of Jack Daniel’s whiskey to QVC have used mouse pads to keep their Web addresses in front of people.

“Every company suddenly has a new need to create, buy and distribute advertising that constantly remind prospective clients of a new address that’s not on a street but on the Internet,” ASI’s Spike said.

Though a mouse will usually work just fine without a mouse pad, many people like them because they set aside a regular place where the mouse can always be reached.

In addition, a mouse pad can make a statement about a person’s interests, becoming one of the few ways to personalize a PC.