To the Moon and Back for Valencia Firm

By Jana Adkins, SCVBJ Editor
– Reprinted with permission from Santa Clarita Valley Business Journal

Not all companies can lay claim to the fact that their products directly supported the life of Apollo astronauts, but Santa Clarita-based Cicoil can. And in a chance opportunity, one of the long-lost flat cable harnesses produced by the company came up for auction from a private collection – and came back to the place it was manufactured 50 years later.

The flat high-performance cables, embedded in lightweight ribbons of materials for maximum flexibility, enabled continuous monitoring of vital signs, such as blood pressure, respiration, body temperature, and pulse rate for each astronaut during flight and orbit – and for the spacewalk of Apollo 9 astronauts in 1969.

“There was an auction of a lot of Apollo space memorabilia. It came out of Astronaut James McDivitt’s private collection. That’s how it came to my attention,” said Howard Lind, owner, president and CEO of Cicoil. “We registered and bid on it and won the auction. Now we have it back at Cicoil, set up in a nice display case of historical items in our lobby.”

Amazingly, the harness looks virtually brand-new, considering its age and the number of miles it has traveled, said a spokesperson for the company.

Cicoil’s cable systems also supported astronauts John Glenn when he orbited the earth, Edward White who took the first walk in space, and Neil Armstrong who took the first step on the moon. Cicoil’s newest owner, however, migrated a slightly shorter distance to helm the pioneering company.

From Harvard to gears

Growing up in Canada, Lind came to the United States to attend Harvard Business School where he says he was “bitten by the entrepreneurial and manufacturing bug.” While friends went on to seemingly more prestigious positions, Lind chose a small company in Queens, New York.

Howard Lind, President and CEO of Cicoil Corporation looks through a display case holding an actual Cicoil cable assembly from the Apollo 9 space walk in 1969, recently acquired by the company. Photo by Dan Watson.

“It was a small, rundown company that made gears. Over time, I convinced the owner to sell it to me. I bought it, growing it and making it better,” Lind said. Lind later sold the company to what is the Parker Hannifin Corp.

“Ever since then I’ve run small manufacturing companies with proprietary technology and put in new equipment,” he said. “Cicoil originally was a vendor to a company in New York. I was looking for something new that had proprietary technologies.”

In 2006 Lind purchased Cicoil – building and all. The firm was founded in 1956, replacing stiff bulky cables for companies like IBM and the aerospace industry. Originally located in Hollywood, in later years the firm moved to Chatsworth and then to Valencia in 1986. It’s been in Valencia 30 years.

Innovation is continuously behind the flexible flat cables filled with electrical wiring, and the company’s research and development has resulted in several U.S. and worldwide patents. What Cicoil offers can’t be purchased in China or elsewhere, Lind said.
What is manufactured in Valencia is innovative, unique and valuable, he said. The firm constantly comes up with new products and techniques, serving primarily the military and aerospace industries, but also the medical and medical diagnostics industry. And a wide variety of machinery in the semi-conductor and robotic equipment fields use Cicoil products, as well. The benefit of flat cables is they occupy only half the space of comparable round cable counterparts.

Aerospace clients using Cicoil’s products include Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Space X. Abbott Laboratories uses their products in the medical space, and semi-conductor firm KLA-Tencor is also a big player. The better known stories, however, might be the one about when America put a man on the moon with the help of Cicoil’s ribbon cables. In the decades that followed, Cicoil flat cables have performed on every U.S. fighter jet, most commercial airplanes, and in many demanding missile and land-based applications – all of which keep Cicoil in continuous research and development mode.

Innovation

“You have to constantly come up with new products and techniques of value to your customers. That’s the trademark of a company that’s going to survive and thrive in a high-cost environment.”
As for the man who preferred manufacturing to Wall Street, Lind says sales have more than doubled with the company, now tracking $10 million.

“We’ve been growing pretty well and pretty rapidly over the past five to six years. The company was always a well-kept secret and it didn’t do a lot of sales and marketing. We hired sales people, got more visibility and our cables are now being used in more and more applications,” Lind said. “Last year we grew more than 20 percent.”
With 85 employees operating out of 16,000 square feet of space, Cicoil also has engineers on site who help with a lot of customization for customers and end users.

“We do a lot of customizing. Our engineers work with the engineers of our clients to design and customize applications,” Lind said. But, that takes time and Cicoil includes design and production time in its business plans.

“From the point you first talk to the engineers to getting into regular production orders, it typically takes two years,” Lind said. “That takes a lot of sustained hard work. We have to be patient; it’s not a quick turnaround cycle.”

As for relocating from the northeast to Santa Clarita 10 years ago, Lind said that part of the equation is easy.
“I see being in Santa Clarita as a plus. It’s a business-friendly environment and good workforce,” Linda said. “I am proud to have it as a home base and for business.”