The Kingston California Factory Tour

After the Tour – Lunch

After the tour, we were invited to a favorite Japanese restaurant of Kingston employees. While Kingston’s Technology manager and both of Kingston’s PR people politely listened to my big surf stories, we had a great meal. These people are completely down-to-earth although they are among the most knowledgeable people in their line of work anywhere. They were very candid and we also discussed international marketing which included a discussion of how the Japan earthquake and tsunami directly and indirectly impacted the chain of supply of hardware in the world and how Kingston used their knowledge, experience and strategy to keep supplies and pricing normal in the fight against hording.

They were able to answer this editor’s questions including one that asked when we would see breakthrough pricing of $1 per GB of SSD storage. Although we have seen mail-in-rebates and severe discounting occasionally reach this price point, it isn’t likely to occur regularly for another year or two. Also, SSDs are just tiny part of Kingston’s overall business – evidently there is still a lot of room for growth.

We also discussed the life of RAM – how it is super-expensive when it is first introduced and how it’s overclocking performance is at it highest closer to the beginning of the manufacturing process. As the process matures, the prices drop and it’s extreme overclocking ability also tends to diminish as the shrinks occur and the wires get closer to each other. Finally, at End of Life (EoL), the RAM is again super-expensive and hard to find. What is also amazing is that Kingston is still supporting PC-100 – many years after you would expect support would be dropped for it.

Kingston is clearly a great place to work! All throughout the tour, this editor was impressed with the hard-working staff – it is described as “lean” – the 800 or so people working there are obviously long-term (no, they are not hiring) and they appear to love their work. It reflects Kingston’s owners who are described as still down to earth and unchanged by their incredible success. In fact the owners don’t have their office segregated from the other workers – they work in cubicles on the main floor like everyone else. Only the engineers have private offices with doors.

Throughout our tour we were impressed with the professionalism of the Kingston staff, the automated manufacturing process, the incredible number of machines, and the overall experience. Then you realize that there are several of these facilities worldwide and this one is quite small compared to the one in Shanghai.

Kingston’s PR is unlike most other companies that consider PR “entry level” and a place to start and to get promoted away from. It is recognized that PR is crucial to their company and you will deal with the same Kingston PR people for many years – unlike other mega companies that change their PR people yearly like clockwork. Regarded as one of the “Best Companies to Work for in America” by Fortune magazine, it is not surprising that Kingston’s PR and management still has incredible enthusiasm for promoting their company and they work hard to coordinate Kingston news.

I asked PR Manager David Leong about Kingston and the emerging social networks and he told me:

I think as a company, we are seeing the importance of social media growing. . . . We are currently focusing on Facebook and Twitter mainly as additional ways to communicate. Our target markets vary from the Fortune 500 companies to prosumers to the DIY crowd and of course, enthusiasts. Social media will be more effective in some target markets over others. I would say we are in the ‘experimental phase’ still but all signs point to it being here to stay.

While Kingston is international in nature they have a factory in California and that is impressive. California has become unfriendly to business and there are many places where their manufacturing can be done with far less expense. However, Kingston evidently remembers where they got their start and they headquarter their company in the USA. Admittedly, it is far more logical to continue to expand in other countries, but they assure us that they will never leave the USA.

You can count us really impressed – with everything. From Kingston’s history, to their owners, to their philosophy; it is a great model of an independent mega-business. Every step of their manufacturing is a model of efficiency and extra-ordinary quality control. Machines track the product, people manage the machines, and each and every piece of hardware passes quality control with 100% testing prior to leaving the Kingston factory. That means you the customer will likely have very rare issues with any Kingston product – and if you need help, you will talk to someone in the USA.

No wonder Kingston has grown! This editor wants to give special thanks to Kingston’s Senior Technology Manager, Mark Tekunoff as well as PR Manager David Leong and Jonelle Faria, PR for arranging the tour and guiding us through the factory and for the excellent lunch and their time. We hope to visit Kingston’s other factories for future ABT articles.

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