ShawneeDispatch.com

Reaching a goal is always worth celebrating.

Reaching an $80 million goal? That's worth celebrating in style.

Shawnee-based firm SKC Communications, which provides communications technology products and services, met that goal for 2007. And to reward its employees last month, the company closed early on a Friday, took them to the Country Club Plaza in limousines, gave them $200 gift cards and wined and dined them at a Plaza restaurant.

This year was actually the second for the celebratory event; last year, the company celebrated surpassing its 2006 $68 million sales goal by $1 million. But for SKC, such growth isn't exactly new.

"Actually, we've had double-digit growth for as long as I can remember," Kelly Ammeen Lambert, co-owner, said.

The company has been growing in leaps and bounds since its founding in 1986, and now it has four distinct lines of service: Plantronics headsets, phone systems, videoconferencing and custom conference room design and integration.

"We like to position ourselves as the full-service communications network provider," Lambert said.

Paul Ammeen, Lambert's father, started the business out of his Lenexa home strictly as a headset distributor. He worked for Plantronics and wanted to own his own business, so he approached the company about becoming one of the first specialty headset distributors.

Ammeen named his business using the initials of Lambert, her mother and her brother, Charlie.

The business grew, adding more services, causing it to move two or three times. In 1994, it added Polycom voice conferencing products, and in 1998, SKC brought on Polycom's line of voice, video, data and bridging equipment.

A full-line custom room integration business was added in 2000, Avaya telephony solutions in 2002, and in 2004, the company added another videoconferencing line, TANDBERG. The most recent addition to the company is VBrick digital streaming video.

Now SKC serves national companies like Bank of America, Dell and State Farm Insurance.

"We have contracts with a lot of the Fortune 500 companies, and that is definitely one of our sweet spot areas," Lambert said.

They also work with mid-size companies, for example creating custom conference rooms for Perceptive Software's $18 million building in Shawnee Crossings.

As the business grew, the second generation - Lambert, her brother and eventually her three step-siblings - entered the business. SKC finally landed in Shawnee's Perimeter Park Business Park, at 8320 Hedge Lane Terr., when the company was looking for a place to custom-build a building to suit its needs.

Five years ago, Ammeen retired, and his five children are now equal owners.

With all of the business's growth, it's no surprise that SKC is expanding. The Perimeter Park building was once half office space, half warehouse, but SKC is now in the process of converting the warehouse space into more office space and leasing out warehouse space elsewhere.

SKC also has remote offices in eight cities, including St. Louis, Mo., and Chicago, Ill., as well as Dallas, Texas, where they are looking to open a larger office. There are 130 employees in Shawnee, 25 hired in the last year and 25 more to come next year.

And those employees are rewarded for their work, constantly receiving ongoing product and service training and completing required certification classes. The sales goal have become an important time to recognize long-time employees; this year, six celebrated their fifth year anniversary, and another celebrated a 10-year anniversary.

"Since we've only been around 20 years, that's really important to us," Lambert said.

The parties have been an outgrowth of the holiday parties the company used to throw, and Lambert said SKC wants to make sure it finds new and fun ways to say thank you to their employees.

"Hopefully we'll do this for a few years and then change the venue and then mix it up a little bit," Lambert said. "But I don't think we'd ever go back to the traditional holiday party."

More information on SKC can be found at www.skccom.com.

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