Argosy Private Equity News

On May 1, 2020, Argosy Investment Partners IV, L.P., managed by Argosy Private Equity (“Argosy”), exited its investment in KIC Team Technical Cleaning.  The Company was acquired by Inverness Graham, a private investment firm based in Pennsylvania.

Headquartered in Auburn, Maine, KIC Team is a global industry leader in the design, manufacturing, and marketing of a broad range of high quality, branded and private label single-use technical cleaning products and agents. The Company’s products are used to clean FinTech electronic devices (e.g. ATMs, POS devices, cash recyclers, thermal printers, etc.) used to process transactions, facilitate payments, process orders and images, and print transaction records and documents for the banking, hospitality, retail, logistics, transportation, and self-service markets.

Argosy acquired KIC Team in June 2011, partnering with Anvil Capital, an independent sponsor. Over the course of its investment, Argosy implemented various tools within its Value Acceleration Methodology (“VAM™”) and rebuilt the Company’s leadership team, including the CEO, CFO, General Manager, and Vice President of Marketing. The Company sold its legacy cosmetic foam business in order to focus on the KIC Team business. Argosy shifted the KIC Team sales strategy to target OEMs and successfully built relationships with the top 50 FinTech OEMs including Diebold, NCR, Epson, Canon and Brother. The Company has ten issued patents and five pending for specialized tools and unique cleaning agents that have been engineered for the specific needs of each application including Miracle Magic™, Waffle Technology and Autoclean.

We believe a successful sale in the current environment is a testament to Argosy’s strategy of investing in differentiated businesses with strong management teams, using conservative senior leverage, while growing and professionalizing businesses through the implementation of our VAM™ processes.

For more information on this investment, please contact Don Charlton, Partner, at (610) 971-9685 or dcharlton@argosycapital.com.