Key Tronic

The world's largest independent producer of computer keyboards, Key Tronic Corporation manufactures a broad range of key, touch, and voice input devices from its production facilities in Spokane, Washington; Dundalk, Ireland; Juarez, Mexico; and Las Cruces, New Mexico. The company also produces goods through joint ventures in Asia. Founded in 1969, Key Tronic rose to the top of the keyboard industry during the 1970s, when the company captured the largest share of the worldwide market for keyboards. It then battled its way through the highly competitive 1980s and 1990s to reign as the dominant keyboard manufacturer in the world in the mid-1990s. According to Lewis G. Zirkle, founder of Key Tronic Corporation, he had two choices after he was fired from Litton Industries in 1969, "either go back East or go fishing." His words, spoken in the early 1980s before a group of financial analysts gathered in Seattle, were deceptive, however, because Zirkle did neither. Instead, he mortgaged his home, withdrew his life's savings&mdashcumulated from working more than 30 years in the electronics industry--and rented space at the Spokane Industrial Park in Spokane, Washington, where he began his new entrepreneurial career at age 54. Zirkle's time in the electronics industry had included 24 years as part of General Electric's production management team. Throughout his three decades of involvement in the industry, he amassed valuable experience that he put to use in his new business venture, which he organized in the fall of 1969 and incorporated as Key Tronic Corporation. Zirkle's aim was to manufacture electronic keyboards, products that were then intended for use with digital printers, cathode ray tube display systems, and industrial control systems. As preparations for the start of the fledgling company were hastily made in October 1969, a modest start-up enterprise emerged. Zirkle helped build the walls to house the six employees he would soon hire. Inside the walls, the trappings were meager: Zirkle shared a desk with his secretary, the five other employees huddled around makeshift tables&mdash⁄eets of plywood balanced atop wooden sawhorses--and all those employed by the company, including Zirkle, swept the floors and scrubbed the toilets. It was a dubious, sketchy start for a former electronics production manager nearing the twilight of his professional career, but in the years ahead another industry dependent upon the electronic keyboards Zirkle was preparing to manufacture would streak into the business world, recording explosive, worldwide growth that would catapult Zirkle's negligible enterprise with it. The mercurial popularity of personal computers, inoperable without electronic keyboards, proved a pivotal factor in Key Tronic's development. The inextricable connection between Key Tronic's product and the growth of the computer industry would fully redeem the sacrifices made in the fall of 1969 and make the company a formidable force in the years ahead. By November 1969, Zirkle and his staff had completed the design of Key Tronic's first keyboard, which was then subjected to a battery of tests for the next six months. Once the company's keyboard design passed inspection, the first shipment of Key Tronic keyboards exited the company's rented offices in April 1970. As the 1970s unfolded, the popularity of capacitance keyboards like those designed and manufactured by Key Tronic fueled the growth of Zirkle's company, snatching business away from more expensive solid-state keyboards and drawing the attention of the all-important original equipment manufacturers that did not produce their own keyboards. As the orders poured in, Key Tronic rapidly grew, increasing its payroll to 200 by 1972. By April 1976, six years to the month after the first shipment of keyboards had left Key Tronic's headquarters, the company recorded its first million dollar sales month; two years later it was recognized for the first time as the leader in the ke