Maine Sen. Angus King tours Auburn company
(PHOTO / Amber Waterman) Peter Klein, CEO and president of KICTeam Inc. in Auburn, gives Sen. King a tour of the manufacturing floor where the Waffletechnology® cleaning cards are made. 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.
U.S. Sen. Angus King tours KICTeam, an Auburn company that develops, manufactures and distributes innovative disposable cleaning and maintenance products for various technology equipment with the company's CEO and President Peter Klein on Friday. During a brief presentation before the tour, King remarked, "I love exporting to China," after discovering KICTeam exports to the country three times per week.
"We were delighted have Maine Senator Angus S. King, Jr. visit our Auburn facility. We told the Senator our story of a Maine company, whose success is tied to innovation and unique products which have a direct impact on virtually everyone on the planet. What is most exciting, we told him, is that we are building this business on Maine's most overlooked natural resource - it's people. Through our creativity, talents and hard work, our company is growing and thriving. Our goal is to keep KICTeam on this path, and bring continued success to our community, our region and our state." said Klein.
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.
