Co-founder of Caice, Ken Amott’s pioneering vision in 1993
Discover Ken Amott’s pioneering vision for Caice Acoustic Air Movement, when he co-founded the company with Martyn Cashmore in 1993. As well as describing what it was like being an engineer, working 7 days a week. Sales Director, Duncan Powell asks all the key questions.
What has led to the success over all this time?
Learn why Information Technology, new product development and the Caice Test Centre are so important in ensuring that clients always have access to the best products and services.
Why Ken has such confidence in the future
Listen to Ken explain why he has such confidence in the new, highly experienced board of directors at Caice and outlines what clients can expect, long into the future.
Ken Amott answer Duncan Powell's questions [start time in brackets]
[00.18] Why did you and Martyn (Cashmore) start Caice?
[01.08] Did you always set out to be pioneers?
[02.24] Why the name Caice?
[02:55] Why is having a great IT system so important to you?
[03:49] As an engineer, what was it like in the early days?
[04:27] What was your first big break?
[06:00] How have you managed to find, motivate and keep so many employees?
[07:11] What would you say to clients about the future of the company?
Read transcript of the Ken's answers to Duncan Powell's questions
[00.18] Why did you and Martyn (Cashmore) start Caice?
Ten years before we started Caice we both began working for a company called PAR Acoustics in Wokingham. He was sales manager, I was junior engineer. We helped to build a successful sales team through the 80s and 90s then sadly, the owners of the business made some poor business decisions and the company went bust in 93. They were bought out by a German company who offered both me and Martyn the same jobs – to carry on.
We thought, well, hang on, we’ve been here ten years. We didn’t have a share in the business. It was probably even less likely we’re going to get a share of the business with the German owners. So we had a long, hard think about things and took the big leap and Caice was born.
[01.08] Did you always set out to be pioneers?
We certainly always had our ideals about how we wanted to do things. IT has always been an integral part of our business, writing our own in our systems with Jason Anthony, starting from PAR, pretty much day one when we started Caice. And the sophistication has grown. Attenuator selector, Fan Coil selector, Acoustic Louvre selector, Sales Flow. They are leading edge software systems, incredibly complex. They are pioneering.
If you then look at the factory with some of the machinery and the technology we employ there to make the products, the products themselves. Things like introducing a modular concept for Fan Coil Units, which is a new thing at the time, with integral attenuators. You assembled the thing all in bits and put it on site. Nobody else had done that, so that was pioneering.
“We've created and built a test centre, which none of our competitors has got anything like that to that extent, where you can acoustically test Attenuators acoustically and thermal test Fan Coil Units. So, that is pretty pioneering."
Ken Amott, Founder of Caice
[02.24] Why the name Caice?
That’s an interesting one. It was Computer Aided Industrial and Commercial Engineering. Not that we have actually used it today. The concept was there were two elements behind that. One was the common theme of computers, computer aided, and the second was we didn’t particularly want to tie it to acoustics because the thought was, maybe further down the line, we might want to move off onto more general engineering products. Apart from acoustics.
[02:55] Why is having a great IT system so important to you?
IT covers absolutely everything you do, whether you’re selecting a product, producing a quote, creating a purchase order, a delivery note, an invoice, and then when you go on the production side, it controls the shop floor, loadings the batches of goods as they go onto the shop floor to be made.
And then we also send machine instructions from the production system onto individual machines, like the lasers, a duct line to produce the goods accurately. And then the final bit, the jigsaw as you go through the factory, is the dispatch system, where every label has got its barcode. You swipe it, put it onto the pallet, and there, you know exactly what’s gone on that pallet onto the delivery note.
"Without our IT systems, all of which are written in house, the business just doesn't function. It's absolutely pivotal to what we do."
Ken Amott, Founder of Caice
[03:49] As an engineer, what was it like in the early days?
Hard work. Very hard work. The thing is, it was fun, so you forget the hard work. We were both a lot younger, Martyn and I, so you got the energy to work and it was seven days a week, long hours every day. Often putting the family second and work first because you just had to get your answers back to clients. But, I would say hard work and fun, but you did have to do absolutely everything from making the tea to doing the quotes to doing the acoustic consultancy. Absolutely everything.
[04:27] What was your first big break?
That’s a tough one to answer because I think the first year we did £350K turnover, so it was small jobs. And I can remember some of the good clients that we dealt with that supported us. People like Brian Warwicker where Dave Long was working and still deal with today. Companies like Haremead that are no longer with us but have a different name, helped us with lots and lots of small orders. I think that the bigger breaks came later as the jobs got bigger. So things like 250 Bishops Gate, which was 80 acoustic fan units that we built for about £300,000. We also did another job for Haremead, which was a clean room construction project with specialist fan units, which was about £200K. And they were later years, so may be 95 to 98.
[04:27] What's been your proudest moment?
I would say family is always the proudest moment. So, I mean, I’ve got Kieran and Dan as my two sons. I married Caroline, whose son is Stu, and I do very much look on as Kieran, Dan and Stu as my three boys. And I’m very lucky. We have great time together, we have some wonderful moments to look back on and then beyond that business.Obviously, I mean, Caice started off as our baby. I’d like to think of it now as something that every employee has a slice of. But obviously very, very proud of Caice.
[06:00] How have you managed to find, motivate and keep so many employees?
I’d like to think that it’s because people trust in us to do the right thing for them. And that’s not always easy. You’ve been here long enough to understand that we’ve not always made money. There have been tough times. And then trying to pay salary increases in those situations and move people’s careers along, it’s not easy. But we’ve always tried to do our best, and I hope our people believe that. I also think that we’ve given people the opportunity to progress their careers.
And you certainly and Neil, first jobs pretty much, coming from junior positions and then all the way to being directors is a good example of that. And then there’s the fun element. There is definitely something a little bit special about Caice, that we work hard, but at the same time we try and have a bit of fun and get on together as a team.
[07:11] What would you say to clients about the future of the company?
I’d say it’s in very good hands. This morning I added up the number of years that the the new board – Mark, Neil, Kevin, Ben, Paul and you. 110 years between the six of you. I think that says a lot. It says that these people have been here a long time.They’re very good at what they do and trusting them to do the right thing for our clients. And it’s not just the board that we can trust in. Many of these people have been here a long time, so our level of service will continue to be the best it possibly can be.
