Sensing Danger, Moorpark Firm Grew Through Diversity

In the mid-1980s, Moorpark-based Kavlico Corp. was doing well enough, producing sensors that helped guide the flight of virtually everS.-built military and commercial aircraft.

Still, something troubled company officials, recalls Executive Vice President Lee Nelson. “We calculated that 85% of our business was dependent on defense and aerospace,” he said. “Obviously, we were too highly concentrated in a single market.”

Nelson doesn’t claim that Kavlico’s president, Michael Gibson, or the firm’s other top officials foresaw the airline industry’s current problems or drastic cutbacks that were to come in defense spending.

He said, however, that Kavlico--the name is derived from founder and Chairman Fred Kavli--started investigating new markets for its sensors, which use electronic signals to measure pressure and pinpoint an object’s position.

Using the same capabilities that had made it a leader in aircraft and missile guidance, the company developed new lines of sensors for use in auto-emissions systems, power steering, engine controls and numerous other non-defense applications.

Today, 70% of Kavlico’s sales are to such commercially oriented concerns as Ford, Chrysler, General Electric and Caterpillar, while defense and aerospace account for only 30% of revenues. The privately held firm’s annual sales total $67 million.

The payroll has grown from 250 in the mid-’80s to 850 today, Nelson said, “and we expect to hire 300 more people in the next few years.”

For its dramatic change in direction, Kavlico last week received a Conversion to a Peace Economy award from the national Council on Economic Priorities, a 4,000-member group that monitors corporate social responsibility. The Moorpark firm was one of four to receive that honor.

Now, however, Kavlico is taking pains not to over diversify.

The company still has many aerospace customers, including Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Pratt & Whitney and almost all U. S. airlines, Nelson reports.

“We have no intention of abandoning aerospace. We’re convinced it will come back,” Nelson said. “We’re even putting up a new building that will be devoted entirely to production for that market.”