Maine firms take world stage with little-known, everyday products that rack up millions in sales
(PHOTO / Amber Waterman) Peter Klein, CEO and president of KICTeam Inc. in Auburn, holds the Waffletechnology® cleaning card. The company sells about 30 million cards and wipes annually to clean anything from ATMs to turnstiles in New York's subways.
KICTeam Inc., an Auburn-based maker of private-label, disposable cleaning products for everything from baggage and shipping label printers to ATMs and credit-card readers, employs 60 to 80 mostly full-time workers. It pulled in more than $10 million in revenues in 2013, less than $100,000 of that from customers in Maine.
Swiping clean
Peter Klein, CEO and president of KICTeam, exemplifies the practicality that he cites as a key to innovation. KICTeam emerged after custom contractor Enefco USA Inc., also of Auburn, bought KIC Products (for keep it clean) in 2004, and then merged it with a San Diego-based competitor in 2007.
While the initial company, KIC Products, had good name recognition, it couldn't get business with Japan Cash Machine, which at the time manufactured 80% of the devices that took money from people, such as gaming and bank machines. Klein explains that JCM opened up its machines to clean them rather than using flat cards impregnated with cleaner like the ones KIC Products made.
"I asked them why they didn't use cleaning cards, and they said their machines had sensors inside that were recessed, so they couldn't be cleaned with a flat card," Klein says. "So I asked if we had a card that could clean recessed lenses, would he buy it, and he said, 'yes.'" Klein returned to his office and consulted with Glen Bailey, his vice president of product development, who Klein says has a very creative mind.
"The next day he came into my office with a piece of paper, folded it in half, and tore two [small perpendicular] lines in the middle of it," Klein told Mainebiz, as he demonstrated the process. When the piece of paper is opened up, the torn center turns into a slightly raised area that Klein says can clean the recessed areas of machines made by JCM and others. That's how the company's patented Waffletechnology card cleaner originated. It is resold by the company's clients, which put their own brands on it and then resell it to customers. The cards have a plastic core with fabric over it and one of the company's 15 EnVanish brand wet cleaners soaked into it.
"We really are an undercover company," says Klein. When KIC Products was merged with Clean Team, the San Diego-based flat cleaning card competitor, the combined company was renamed KICTeam, taking parts of each of their former names. The name KICTeam only recently was put onto the company's doors at its Auburn plant, replacing the parent Enefco's name.
The company now makes more than five dozen products with 400 different SKUs, including flat and waffled products, and most are custom-made. It sells about 30 million cards and wipes annually, Klein says, including to the New York City transit system (turnstile swipes), Las Vegas casinos (money and slot machines), post offices and retailers. The cards typically can be used only once, and then tossed. "It's a razor-blade business," says Klein. The cards run from 50 cents to $1.50 a piece retail. KICTeam has sales offices in Australia, China, Europe, Canada and elsewhere.
"We're one of the few companies that can claim our product is used in every country in the world," he says, adding that Federal Express uses its cleaners for the labels it prints. "We make everything in Maine for the world, but our revenues inside Maine are very small. The company isn't known in the L-A area." He estimates, however, that if all existing electronic devices were cleaned once a month for 50 cents, his company would have $1.3 billion in revenues. "We like it dirty," says Klein, when asked about going into the recesses where others fear to tread to find dirt. Often, he says, a machine that appears to be broken merely needs to be cleaned. In other cases more is required, like the doughnut KICTeam found inside a broken printer from a doughnut shop.
The company currently has 85,000 square feet of space, which Klein says is starting to get tight. He's seeking options, but plans to keep the company in Auburn. That doesn't rule out international expansion, initially focused on Europe, but eventually on Japan. For now, KICTeam is producing marketing materials in eight languages.
by Lori Valigra Mainebiz (HOMEGROWN TECHNOLOGY 2014-05-19)