POSTED: Wednesday, July 9 th , 2008

All of us at KJS would like to extend a very warm welcome to Mr. Andy Powell…

We have already had a long and fruitful relationship with Andy as he comes to us from AIM USA, a leader in avionics/databus interface products. In addition to his experience with AIM, Andy has also worked for Curtiss Wright and brings to us a truly vast background in the Mil-Aero electronics/test market, particularly in the Great Lakes region. He has established an office for us near Dayton, Ohio and will be assuming sales/marketing responsibilities for Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and some other areas (Such as Louisville, KY—per special request).

A few words from KJS…..

As many in our industry know, many businesses in our market were adversely affected by the burst of the so-called "tech bubble" in 2001. In fact, many representative firms are now defunct or severely diminished because they relied too heavily on a single product line, a single industry and resisted the need to diversify. Contrary to a lot of businesses in our sector, KJS has maintained double-digit annual growth throughout the late '90s and 2000s because we're always looking for emerging markets that may be as far as 5 years away. We cultivate those opportunities and endeavor to capitalize on them for our principals.

So what is new for 2008 and beyond? As many know, the upcoming elections and other geo-political forces beyond our control may affect military budgets and as a result, a good deal of business for RF components, embedded computing gear and test equipment. Therefore, we will be placing additional emphasis on penetrating further into other markets such as telecom, medical, homeland security and general industry opportunities. We have already seen explosive growth in WiMax technologies and are beginning to see the return of the fiberoptic/wireline market in a big way. Medical imaging opportunities continue to grow and we will pursue those markets with typical KJS vigor. Looking forward, 2009 actually looks to be a very promising year.

The above notwithstanding, when one considers the opportunities before him, one must also consider the threats. Many American companies shifted production to "low cost" manufacturing sites (China) with seemingly reckless abandon during the last 5 years and that fact has hurt a lot of U.S. suppliers. This trend has slowed, however, as companies learn the hard lessons of dealing with a country that refuses to protect their IP, tolerates graft and corruption and does everything in their power to extract know-how from the products that they are essentially taught to build. Nevertheless, we are now in a true global economy and China figures prominently in commercial electronics. At KJS, we are always cognizant of these forces and we strive to pursue those opportunities that will return the most revenue to our principals while doing our utmost to protect our client's IP.

Finally, KJS would like to publicly thank our principals-many of whom have been with us since our humble beginnings in the early 1970s. KJS would be nothing without you and we appreciate your trust, loyalty, friendship and of course, your business.

Here's to another great year!