When Kory Ewell, Owner/President of KCM Cable & Manufacturing, reached out to WHN, he asked if we would be interested in profiling a small start-up in our industry. I told him these are often some of the more interesting and inspiring articles we do and jumped at the chance to interview him.
Kory began by describing his experience at a very young age. “In 1994, my father started a business called Newonics, a board manufacturing company.” As a kid, Kory helped in the business after school and during the summers. “He later sold that and acquired a cable manufacturing company called NukanX, and I worked there throughout middle and high school.” His father exited the business in 2004, and Kory began serving a two-year mission for his church.
When he returned from the mission, Kory worked for several electronics firms. When Covid hit, he was laid off for a time. To make ends meet, he used his knowledge of cable assembly to pick up a contract for a harness build. He built the harnesses even after he was called back to work. His customer started asking Kory if he could do more. Encouraged, he began to bring on additional customers.
With the boat close to the dock, it was time to make the jump. “It got to the point where the income I was making was more than what I was making at my regular job, so I quit and went full-time with KCM Cable & Manufacturing in May of 2022. I had an idea born out of necessity and it just grew from that.”
Kory now has two full-time and two part-time employees. The first customer he landed was in agricultural robotics and he has been able to capture some well diversified business since. “I have two or three customers that do aftermarket products for off-road side-by-sides and now we do a lot of other cables for the specialty automotive aftermarket. We also do some medical assemblies and I have customers in x-ray and prosthetics, so it’s a wide range.”
Most of KCM’s customers have been acquired through prospecting. “I’m just knocking on doors and leveraging contacts I had and asking for meetings. That’s something I learned while I was on the church mission. We would knock on doors, and I did that every day for two years. It’s a skill I learned, and it has helped me in the business world.” Through that experience, Kory learned how to recognize the needs of people and businesses and identify ways he can help. “So, I can go out and preach about our skills and hopefully hit a chord that makes sense to them, and they become customers.”
With a couple years under his belt, the business is beginning to come more into focus for Kory and his team. “It’s a discussion we are having internally. Tooling is expensive and it’s hard to be good at everything. Out of necessity, we have taken on many different types of customers. I think we are at a point where we have the cash flow, the tooling and know-how to begin to specialize in those areas I’ve mentioned.” Kory also emphasized that their nimble platform is well suited for quick-turn prototypes in all industries.
KCM does not shy away from complex harnesses, and it is a common denominator among the products they build. “We do a lot of assemblies with 28 gage wire with really small crimps or small wire soldering. Maybe they don’t have the people who know how to do that, or it’s just a low volume thing, but a lot of other places will reject this work,” Kory insisted. He has been fortunate to onboard folks with previous training and who have been in the industry a long time to make this possible.
The company’s base in Utah and specific location are working well. “Utah is a growing manufacturing hub, and the state government has put a lot of resources into bolstering military and aerospace manufacturing,” Kory explained. “We are in a rural area, about 50 miles away from major manufacturing hubs, so there are a lot of local people who don’t want to commute that far.” Having become fluent in Spanish during his church mission has helped a lot. “I’ve been able to work with people who don’t necessarily have the best English skills, but they can read a drawing and understand electronics, so that has been a real plus.”
Kory has chosen a very careful path as he grows his business. “We don’t like to use debt as we grow so we were growing at the speed of cash. I started the business without any debt, and I have been able to keep it that way. So, everything we make just gets reinvested and all the equipment we have purchased we’ve done so with cash.” He wants to grow the business, but he insists on preserving the high level of service they are currently able to give.
Manufacturing is in Kory’s blood, and he wishes to preserve that legacy for future generations. “One thing I want to make sure is that we don’t lose our ability to make things as a country. I think we tend to go on Amazon and click for delivery the next day and we don’t really think about where that thing came from—that it had to be planned, materials had to be sourced, and somebody had to machine or build it. So, it’s important for me to keep that manufacturing know-how alive.”
In addition to manufacturing, Kory has been eager to consult with OEMs to enhance their in-house efforts. “A couple of my customers also build their own cables, and they have looked to us and our expertise to come in and help them make their manufacturing line run better. We’ve trained their operators and helped them become better at manufacturing cables.” It’s a strategy that has helped KCM gain business on assemblies the OEMs decide are just too complicated to build themselves. One of the ways he has done this is by introducing them to the WHMA/IPC A-620 specification, and he lamented that a lot of OEMs don’t even know of its existence.
Kory is much more centered on what happens under his roof, versus evaluating his position in relation to competitors. “I think a lot of companies advertise that they are the best in quality, or better than others at something. I tell people that we are concentrating on trying to be the best at what we do. There will always be somebody that can do something cheaper and faster. We are just trying to deliver the best service and provide value to the customers that they’re happy with.”
With KCM, Kory has taken something that he loved and felt comfortable with, which is cable manufacturing, and turned it into his full-time job. “Honestly, I have no regrets at all. I work twice as hard as I did in my other jobs, but there’s not a day that goes by where I feel as stressed as I did working for someone else. Now I get the satisfaction of helping customers with their designs and building their cables and seeing how they work in their products.”
If you’d like more information on KCM Cable & Manufacturing, you can jump on their website at kcmcable.com. You can contact Kory directly at 801-472-2640, or email at [email protected].
