Maker All Smiles About Prospects for Kit-Cat Klocks : Retail: First sold in 1939, the zany clocks enjoy a market bolstered by strong buyer loyalty. In the works is a build-your-own-clock kit.
Carolyn Munn saw her first Kit-Cat Klock in a department store in 1947 and begged her parents to buy her the smiling clock with the wagging tail and rolling eyes. They wouldn’t.
Late one night 13 years later, Munn spotted a Kit-Cat smiling at her from inside a Los Angeles jewelry store. The store was closed, so she drove 70 miles the next day just to buy it. Since then, the Hayfork, Calif., woman has owned several Kit-Cats, including a rhinestone-studded model she discovered at a Missouri truck stop a few years back. When her house burned to the ground a year later, she says, one of the most painful things was losing the clock.
Munn’s loyalty is typical of the way many Kit-Cat owners feel about the clock that most of us remember hanging in a favorite aunt’s kitchen or in a next-door neighbor’s home. And it’s that kind of nostalgia that is inspiring a new generation of people to buy their own animated clocks of the zany cat.
First marketed by a Seattle company in 1939, Kit-Cat currently resides in San Juan Capistrano at the California Clock Co. owned by Woody Young, a former manager for International Business Machines Corp. and Kidder, Peabody & Co. Young, 46, bought the company in 1982 when its owner decided to retire.
Young said the former owner convinced him that the Kit-Cat clock, which celebrated its 50th birthday last year, had a stable future--it was a unique product in the clock market with strong buyer loyalty.
“The clock is going to be around forever,” Young said recently during a tour of the firm’s assembly and distribution plant in Fountain Valley. “I’m just a caretaker of the company. After I leave, someone else will take over and take care of the clock.”
Young was dressed in a black tuxedo with tails--an outfit he says identifies him with his product--and sported a black-banded Kit-Cat watch on his right wrist.
About 10 million of the Kit-Cat clocks have been sold through the years, Young said. California Clock currently sells about 25,000 Kit-Cats each year, with about 10% of them sold overseas.
“The clock smiles at you. The smile puts people at ease. You can’t look at it without smiling yourself,” said Young, the man responsible for bringing the cat clock down from the wall and starting the Kit-Cat Fan Club that now has 3,300 members worldwide.
After Young bought the company, he licensed the Kit-Cat name and has been introducing an ever-increasing line of Kit-Cat products: Kit-Cat cookie jars, coffee mugs, picture frames, pencils, T-shirts and towels. He also started a mail-order sales operation through the fan club newsletter, “Smile.”
Those efforts have helped boost California Clock’s revenue from about $200,000 in 1982 to about $1 million today, Young said. The firm has about 85 full-time employees.
Because Kit-Cat is by far the company’s biggest seller, Young has decided to retire other animated clocks--namely, K.C. the Bear, Fifi the French Poodle and Professor Timebelly the Owl--to concentrate on Kit-Cat.
The company says its research shows that 60% of Kit-Cat customers are women aged 21 to 50, most of whom had Kit-Cat clocks in their parents’ homes. About 60% of Kit-Cat owners hang the clocks in their kitchens, while 15% choose a bedroom.
A main marketing tool for the company is the fan club, formed by Young in 1984. Young likes to test product ideas with readers of the fan club’s bimonthly newsletter before taking them to market.
Also included in the newsletter are true-life tales from club members recounting what the Kit-Cat clock means to them, and how they have helped to spread positive thoughts and love throughout the world by upholding the “Kit-Cat Creed”: “Put a smile on everyone’s face, love in everyone’s heart, energy in everyone’s body and be a positive force in everyone’s life.”
Once available only in basic black and white, the clock today comes in six colors and sells for $33. A rhinestone version costs an extra $10.
The clock is sold mainly to mass merchants and specialty stores, with customers in Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and the Middle East.
The parts are made by subcontractors in the United States and assembled at plants in Fountain Valley, West Germany and Canada.
Two years ago, Young redesigned the clock to make it easier to assemble. As a result, a Kit-Cat clock that used to take up to an hour to assemble now takes two minutes.
The new design, Young said, has boosted interest among overseas investors in licensing the Kit-Cat product from California Clock to set up their own assembly plants. Young is negotiating such arrangements in Japan and Mexico.
Moreover, the simpler design has given Young a new product idea: an assemble-your-own-clock kit that he hopes to have ready for the Christmas gift season. Other products in the works include a furry Kit-Cat doll and Kit-Cat watches with moving eyes.
Young moved the local assembly and distribution facility from San Juan Capistrano to Fountain Valley last year. He had planned to add the Kit-Cat logo and company name to the outside of the building, where they could be seen by drivers on the San Diego Freeway.
But his plan hit a roadblock when the Fountain Valley Planning Commission denied Young’s request last year. Disappointed, he said he has asked the commission to reconsider.
