(FORTUNE Magazine) – Mundane isn't a big seller on Wall Street. While investors salivate over the snazzy new Internet technology in your computer, they don't talk much about the switches that turn those PCs on. Maybe that's why you've never heard of DuraSwitch--the tiny company in Mesa, Ariz., that has designed an improved on-off button for everything from cell phones to airplane control panels. And maybe that's why the company's August debut on the American Stock Exchange seemed so lackluster. In its first day of trading DuraSwitch picked up a forgettable 1% from its offering price, and it has been falling ever since. But while investors may not have warmed to DuraSwitch's button technology, engineers probably will. Patented as the DuraSwitch PushGate, the original switch is the brainchild of Tony VanZeeland, who helped bring electroluminescence--the predecessor of the stuff that makes your watch glow in the dark--to market. Flat, plastic, and touch-sensitive, the PushGate looks a lot like what's found on most microwaves. However, unlike clumsy microwave buttons, the PushGate is easy to press, and it makes a satisfying click each time you push it. (That helps let you know when you've turned the machine on.) What's more, DuraSwitch's buttons don't seem to break: In its testing labs the company has been pounding one switch with a plastic finger nonstop since January 1998--a test it documents live on its Website. At last count, the tiny button had withstood over 300 million pushes.

While DuraSwitch has yet to turn a profit, it has won orders from several major companies. For instance, it has designed switches that control the doors of Disney World's monorail system. (Apparently the old buttons took a beating by Disney's young employees.) And the company is currently working on its largest order--around $1.5 million of switches for an Ericsson cellular phone. As one customer, Nigel Davies of Australian-based membrane switchmaker Markit Graphics, gushes, DuraSwitch's PushGate technology "is like the next killer app in switches."

Early this year investment bank Cruttenden Roth showered DuraSwitch with similar praise when it offered to launch the company's stock nationally. In fact, the firm was so enthusiastic that by midsummer it had pumped up the terms of DuraSwitch's offering. Rather than issuing two million shares, Cruttenden increased the issuance to three million at an asking price between $8 and $9 a share--a move that would land DuraSwitch in the vaunted national Nasdaq. "Our hopes were really high at that point," says DuraSwitch President and CFO Bob Brilon.

But the giddiness ended when Cruttenden realized there were not enough bids for the new deal. Just days before the Aug. 27 offering, DuraSwitch announced that it had reduced its offer to two million shares on the less prestigious American Stock Exchange. The asking price melted to just $5 per share. As Cruttenden Roth's analyst Paul Bloom puts it, "We had some belief that the deal would go better than it did."

So what went wrong? Both Cruttenden and DuraSwitch blame it on the nature of the market. They point out that few investors have much appetite for anything other than large technology deals. "It was really just bad timing," says Brilon.

Fair enough. However, Cruttenden may have made the situation worse by choosing to underwrite the deal alone. Had other investment-banking firms backed DuraSwitch, those bankers might have attracted their own clients, increasing the pool of potential bidders. "There should have been more underwriters," complains shareholder Jon Hickman of the Jurika & Voyles mutual fund. "A firm as small as Cruttenden could use more help." Cruttenden disagrees, arguing that the small regional firms that expressed interest wouldn't have added value to the deal. "The extra underwriters wouldn't have helped. We feel we adequately served the needs of DuraSwitch in this transaction," says Bloom.

Either way, only DuraSwitch can save its stock price at this point. And that might be tough since a setback in production for its Ericsson deal has already frightened some investors. But DuraSwitch insists the Ericsson order will start shipping this quarter. If that's the case--and if DuraSwitch keeps luring customers--the company should turn a profit of 50 cents a share by the end of 2000. Earnings like that would be enough to shoot an Internet stock to the moon. Who knows whether they can do the same for DuraSwitch.

--Amy Kover