Before she joined Logitech two years ago, chief executive Hanneke Faber submitted herself to a boot camp: 48 hours of computer gaming, coached by her 20-something son in Detroit. “He gave me a test afterwards,” says Faber, “which I passed.”
Gamers are core customers of the Swiss technology hardware group. Its gaming brand, Logitech G, which has its own website, sells G Hub software and high-specification hardware, including specialised headsets, keyboards and a bewildering array of mice — the product the company is still best known for.
Founded in 1981 and headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, with offices and innovation centres from San Jose, in Silicon Valley, to Shanghai, Logitech has always aimed to “provide the connection between the human and the compute”, Faber says.
That now means catching the “huge tailwind” of artificial intelligence, as big technology companies start to look for hardware to support their latest products. This year, for example, the group launched an AI-enabled stylus for 3D drawing in physical space using Apple’s Vision Pro headsets. Faber, 56, describes Logitech as “the eyes, the ears and the hands of AI”, just as its mobile keyboards help users connect to tablets and smartphones, and the mouse still links brain and cursor.
“The mouse built this house” is a mantra at Logitech. Faber carries seven in her backpack and extols the recently launched MX Master 4, a programmable mouse that has attracted admiring reviews across the technology community. Click-happy users can tailor its functions with as many as 72 different shortcuts. It is one reason Logitech employs more software than hardware engineers and a source of astonishment for those desk drones who think of the mouse as a dumb “peripheral”.
Faber herself never uses the P-word. She points out that if you are a “software designer who needs to do 1,000 lines of code in three minutes” or “an Excel jockey” or financial analyst, a highly sophisticated mouse is indispensable and can, Logitech claims, make you up to 33 per cent faster.
A former Dutch champion high-diver who studied journalism on a sports scholarship in the US, Faber had no hesitation about applying for the job of chief executive. She had spent her career until then in fast-moving consumer goods and retail, first at Procter & Gamble, then Dutch retailer Ahold. For six years before joining Logitech she held senior positions at multinational Unilever, overseeing food brands such as Hellmann’s and Knorr.
She has a practised answer to the question of what, if anything, those jobs taught her about running a technology company: “Yes, two years ago I was selling mayonnaise. But you need to really understand that user of the mayonnaise and deliver great superior products for her. And that is the same with Logitech,” she says. At Ahold, she was responsible for ecommerce, while Unilever’s nutrition operation was 40 per cent business-to-business. Increasing Logitech’s B2B offering, by selling, for instance, more systems to enhance corporate video calling, is a big part of her strategy.
When she joined in December 2023, the company was coming down from a pandemic-era boom, which had supercharged demand for its video-collaboration tools and gaming accessories. “All of a sudden everyone was video conferencing, was gaming like there was no tomorrow. So it was a bit of a sugar high. The couple of years after Covid were not easy for Logitech and for the industry.” Pre-tax profit, which peaked at $1.15bn in the year to March 2021, was still on the decline. Logitech was also facing pressure from co-founder Daniel Borel, who owns a small stake and wanted to oust the company’s then chair, Wendy Becker.
In trying to set a new course, Faber put her journalism training to use as she met managers and staff. “Why are you doing that? What are you doing? Where are we doing it? Who’s doing it? All of those questions are important in business as well.”
Faber cut the number of her direct reports and drew up a working strategy, which, using start-up jargon, she described as a “minimum viable product”. “We did have to move fast because there was no formal strategy, the business had been in decline for about two years. We had an interim CEO [from June to December 2023] so there was some uncertainty.” In her first week, she gathered the leadership team and they drafted a statement on where and how to act, and some financial goals. Faber took this one-pager out to Logitech’s 7,400 staff, to “get the wisdom of the crowd”, before agreeing it with the board and shareholders. She claims the strategy “hasn’t materially changed since then”.
But the ex-diver’s entry was far from splashless. In an interview for The Verge’s Decoder podcast in July 2024 she chatted freely about the idea of a subscription-based “forever mouse”. The concept had emerged from internal brainstorming about the future of consumer electronics, based on the group’s deeply held commitment to “design for sustainability”, but the idea and her comparison of the device with a Rolex watch attracted ridicule. Logitech had to issue a statement that there was no plan for such a product. A few weeks later, Borel went public with a letter to shareholders criticising succession planning failures and a “toxic culture that [had] become ingrained”. “It must be hard [for founders] because . . . it is their baby,” says Faber. “It truly is like a child . . . When your child leaves the house, you’re not not going to care about your child.”
Becker stepped down this year and Faber has largely repaired relations with Borel. The day after this interview, she was set to meet him to mark the 44th anniversary of the company, and she hopes the co-founders will be part of 50th anniversary celebrations in 2031. “He’s a super-smart guy and he’s got all this experience,” she says, “so we would be crazy not to listen to him.” Contacted separately, Borel says Faber is a “good person” and that the pair now have a “positive and warm relationship”. He continues to push her to maintain the urgency and depth of research spending needed to keep up in a rapidly evolving sector.
Faber does appear to have steadied Logitech and restarted its growth. The shares, which traded at around SFr75 (about $90) when she joined are now worth nearer SFr90. She repeats several times her strategic goal to “play offence”, despite the volatile global environment. She expects to build on Logitech’s advantages, which include a strong balance sheet, a strong brand, which she is unifying around the Logitech name, and diversified manufacturing. Before the pandemic, Logitech built nearly all of its products in Chinese factories. Donald Trump’s tariffs accelerated plans to diversify its supply chain and, by the end of the year, Faber expects fewer than 10 per cent of products going into the US will come from China. At the same time, Logitech continues to sell into the important and highly competitive Chinese market, where its Swissness provides cover against any animus towards US companies.
As for the device with which the company is most closely associated, Faber is used to reading premature obituaries. Logitech is not dependent only on mice, she points out. “But I wouldn’t write the mouse off either.”
A day in the life of Hanneke Faber
We’re dual headquartered and dual listed. I’m based in our office in San Jose and I spend a lot of time in Lausanne.
When I’m in California, my first meeting is usually at 6am. When travelling I’ll get up at 6am, have a quick breakfast and read the FT and NOS.nl.
Here in London, I went for a quick jog along the Thames and around the Tower of London. I try to do exercise that reflects my pace of work — this life is not a marathon, it’s more like high-intensity interval training.
When I’m in California I’m a little more office-based. I spend a lot more time with engineers and product people and partners when I’m there or in Switzerland or in Asia. When I’m out and about, I spend more time with customers and our commercial team, as well as investors.
On a recent morning, I visited and opened our brand new London office and spent time with a very large customer. I then walked over to Logi Work London, where we hosted hundreds of customers, partners and media. This is our annual immersive event to talk about the future of work and to launch a number of our new work products.
I then had a meeting with a partner before dinner with a number of B2B customers, and our friends from UK retailer Currys. I finally turned in at about 11pm.