Who Owns Logitech And Where Are Its Products Made?

If you’ve ever owned or used a personal computer, there’s a really good chance you’ve used a Logitech product at some point (think devices like mice, keyboards, gaming gear, webcams, headsets, and speakers). It didn’t start by making peripherals for Apple’s line of computers, but it wasn’t long before they jumped aboard the Cupertino company’s bandwagon. We bring that up because there are some quirky connections between the two companies that seem something more than just an odd, cosmic coincidence.

While Apple started in Steve Jobs’ garage, Logitech kicked off inside a small farm building in 1981 in the village of Apples, Switzerland. And much like the larger Apple in Silicon Valley, Logitech was also started by three guys. Instead of Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne — the oft-forgotten third co-founder who could’ve been worth billions – this Swiss tech company was started by Daniel Borel, Pierluigi Zappacosta, and Giacomo Marini, all of whom had software backgrounds. The company’s name is a mashup of two shortened French words: “Logi” comes from “logicel” (software) and “tech” from “technologie” (technology).

While Borel, Zappacosta, and Marini are all considered “Chairman Emeritus,” Logitech isn’t “owned” by any of them — or a parent company for that matter, because it’s publicly traded as Logitech International S.A. on the NASDAQ under the ticker LOGI. Since 1994, its main manufacturing site has been located in Suzhou, China. However, due to President Trump’s stiff Chinese tariffs, it’s been aggressively moving production to Malaysia, Mexico, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Meanwhile, research and development is located in the U.S., Ireland, Switzerland, India, China, and Taiwan.

Logitech opened its first U.S. office in March 1982, at 165 University Ave., in Palo Alto, California — a mere 15 minutes from Los Altos, where Apple was established. The University Ave. address would become “lucky” after it eventually became the first home to both Google and PayPal. In 1986, its first Apple peripheral — the Desktop Bus Mouse — was released with the IIGS. The company first went public on the SWX Swiss Exchange (now the SIX Swiss Exchange) in July of 1988 after building a manufacturing plant in Taiwan and opening offices in Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Japan, and the United Kingdom. It took almost a decade before going public in the U.S. (March 1997).

Like any publicly traded company, it has its share of large institutional investors and a board of directors with standard positions like CEO, CFO, and CCO. As of this writing the current CEO is Hanneke Faber, the first female chief executive in the Swiss Market Index. Speaking of executives, another odd connection with Apple was formed when Guerrino De Luca, a longtime Apple veteran, became Logitech’s president and chief executive officer in 1998.

Logitech released one of the first commercially available mice in 1982, the domed-shaped P4, which used opto-mechanical technology. It had an initial MSRP of $299. However, after forming a partnership with HP in 1984, the price dropped to just $50, making it far more accessible to the masses, and may have been the pivotal moment that helped establish it as a peripheral powerhouse. Logitech sold 25,000 P4’s that year alone; it sold its 100 millionth mouse in 1996, hit the one-billion mark in 2008, and today sells some better alternatives to Apple’s “Magic Mouse.”