DAVENPORT, Iowa—Executives at PerMar Security, a Midwestern super-regional, attribute a jump in RMR sales this year to new services on the commercial and residential side of the business.
“Our RMR sales year-to-date is up 37 percent over the same period last year,” said Brad Tolliver, vice president of Per Mar’s Electronic Security Division. And the fourth quarter is looking promising as well, he said. “There’s been a lot of media concern about the market going down, but we see it moving forward. We’ve got quite a few things in the pipeline and it looks like we’ll have a strong quarter sales-wise.”
On the commercial side, “we brought on additional services, managed access control and video verification systems, and that’s helping to drive some of that growth,” he said.
Per Mar, which is a Honeywell First Alert Professional dealer, “went to a program in January where we’re installing GSM on every sale in an effort to avoid problems with VoIP and that’s contributed to RMR growth on the residential side.”
Putting GSM radios in all installations now, is “preparing customers for security today and into the future,” he said. What about talk of an eventual GSM sunset, or newer updated versions of GSM having to be installed in the future? Tolliver predicts that the technology lifespan will be longer than some have estimated, and agrees that when it’s time to update customers to a newer version, it will be an opportunity to talk to that customer again.
Per Mar has also instituted a new company-wide initiative: False Alarm Control Teams. “We call them our FACT teams,” Tolliver said. There are nine in different branch locations, which are spread throughout Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska.
They’re comprised of Per Mar employees, employees from other local alarm companies, police, fire, and 911 personnel. The groups meet monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly to talk about reducing false alarms, as well as other current events and  trends that affect members of the group.
Tolliver thought of the idea as a way to proactively approach the false alarm problem and to ensure that the alarm community is involved in any efforts to institute ordinances.
“We can work together on a common cause, which is more important now than it’s ever been,” he said. In addition to working on false alarms, the groups “educate each other, for example about what services and equipment we use ... it’s also a format to talk to our competitors, to get to know them in a non-threatening environment,” he said.
The FACT teams have been in place for six months and “so far the feedback has been great,” Tolliver said.

 

DALLAS—Alarm monitoring company Monitronics, based here, may be up for sale. According to reports published July 29, Boston-based private equity firm Abry Associates, which backs Monitronics, has announced its intent to sell the monitoring company and expects to see as much as $1 billion from the sale.
Monitronics VP Mitch Clarke said the company had no comment on a potential sale.
Calls to Abry were not returned by press time.
Monitronics, which in late 2009 launched highly focused, mandatory dealer-training program, Monix, is a CSAA Five Diamond certified central station that monitors over 700,000 business and residential accounts. Monitronics central station manager Greg Hurst won CSAA’s Excellence Award for Central Station Manager of the Year at this year’s ESX show in Pittsburgh.
Abry is a firm focused on media, communications, business and information services investing. Investment firms Citi and Moelis & Co are reportedly advising in the sale.
Security Systems News continues to report on this story.
 

THE INTERNET—One of the most discussed UL listings lately is UL 2050, otherwise known as the National Industrial Security Systems standard, which establishes that integrators and central stations are qualified to install and monitor security systems in federal government facilities.
What does the listing mean or not mean? What can it do for your business? What do you need to do to capitalize on the opportunities it opens up?
To answer many of these questions, CSAA held another free educational webinar on July 21. Moderated by CSAA’s VP of marketing and programs Celia Besore and presented by UL section manager, Alarm Certificate Services Pete Tallman, the hour-plus-long webinar addressed this burgeoning trend, highlighted new RMR opportunities, and answered questions from the 100+-person audience.
In discussing whether or not UL 2050 was a right fit for attendees, Tallman made several compelling points. “Could this listing be right for you? You have to weigh out the value. The way the category is structured, it allows a small independent company with a small population of employees and a small service territory to compete equally with a large or nationally based company,” Tallman said. “Another point is that each room or area is going to receive its own alarm system because each area holds different materials for a different project or program, so they’re all independent systems. This introduces additional recurring revenue streams in each of these areas.”
Tallman said interest in UL 2050 had been on the rise. “This segment of the security industry offers many opportunities for service providers that are interested in developing it,” Tallman said. “As for monitoring companies expressing an interest in the national industrial monitoring station category, we are receiving a steady flow of inquires.”
Tallman, who was one of the principal engineers who worked on the creation of UL 2050, covered the genesis of the two categories, National Industrial Security Systems (CRZH) and National Industrial Monitoring Station (CRZM), that fall under UL 2050 listing. CRZH is for the service company, dealer or installer, and CRZM is for the central station. More information on UL 2050 and the four government manuals dictating security requirements, as well as information on finding the government contractor opportunities can be found at UL’s site, CSAA’s site, the ASIS site, and the National Classification Management Society site.
Tallman said the cost to apply for UL 2050 was around $3,500 and the timetable was largely dependent on the applying company’s ability to meet the requirements of listing.
Jim Essam, president of Beaverton, Ore.-based Alarm Central Station, had been thinking about UL 2050 for a while when he decided to attend and learn what he could. “It’s something I’ve looked at and had some discussions about earlier. And it’s something I had some misconceptions about,” Essam said. “I started off in the military as a military police officer … The facilities I worked in were facilities that dealt with the kind of thing UL 2050 deals with. Unlike many military police officers, I was also working in the realm of intelligence, so this is just bringing things home to me.”
Dallas-based Monitronics has also been looking into UL 2050 listing. “My team and I felt the training was very insightful. It gave us a good understanding of what is needed to obtain the endorsements to our UL certification,” said Monitronics central station director Mary Jensby. “Every six months the FBI does a criminal history background check on my employees and myself for us to handle government accounts in our central station … I am getting the information together to proceed to obtain [UL 2050 listing].”
“There’s a lot of opportunity here for members of our industry, and we wanted our members to be aware and know about this,” Besore said. “We had great feedback.” Slides from the presentation are available for download at CSAA’s website.
 

STEVENS, Pa.—Affluent households spent more on home security in 2009 than in 2008, according to a new report called Home Luxury Report 2010, released in July.
“Spending on security went up from $1,562 on average [in 2008] (i.e. the amount spent by home owners buying in that category) to $4006 on average in 2009, up 156.5% overall,” said Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing and author of the report.
“[Home security’s] share of wallet more than doubled; that’s a significant increase at the luxury consumer level,” she added.
The report is based on 4,739 surveys of consumers with incomes above $100,000. The average respondent had an income of $220,000. The sample represents the top 20 percent of the U.S. income-bracket and roughly 22 million households, Danziger said.
The study looks at 22 different categories of luxury spending including: Art & Antiques; Kitchenware, Cookware, Cook’s Tools; and Furniture, Lamps and Rugs. Home Security falls within the Kitchen Appliances, Bath & Building Products category, which was up 32 percent.
Danziger calculates the “share of wallet” for each category and for products within those categories. Home Security was among the “biggest winners” in the share of wallet.
Affluent consumers spent more on their homes in 2009 because they were not relocating, she said.
“What the data indicates is that a lot of spending was done on major remodeling and the big categories that grew were home infrastructure, including air conditioning systems and home security.
“This means that people were investing in infrastructure, not just decorating,” she added.

AMERICAN FORK, Utah—Platinum Protection took a fairly unusual step July 6, holding a public auction here at its headquarters to sell a 17-percent ownership stake in the company.
Why’d they do this? It wasn’t the company’s first choice, but it decided to go this route, executives said, because it was unable, through other means, to settle a dispute with one of the company’s original founders who owned that 17-percent stake, and who now works for a direct competitor.
Management Masters, which is owned by the Jacobson family—several of whom are already investors in Platinum Protection—bought the 17-percent stake with a $2 million credit bid.
“It was a difficult action, but it had to be taken, and the good news is that Platinum is now able to go forward stronger than ever,” said Andrew Kindfuller, CEO of Platinum Protection.
So what exactly happened? “One of the six original founders of the company [Jeremy Pixton], who now works for a direct competitor [Pinnacle Security], had previously pledged ownership interest of his 17-percent interest in Platinum as collateral for a $12 million note,” Kindfuller explained. Management Masters, run by the Jacobson family, is the holder of that $12 million note, and according to Kindfuller “had tried extensively to negotiate a path forward with that founder but was unable to,” he said.
“Based on excellent legal advice,” he continued, “we held a very public sale of that collateral, everything was done 100 percent according to the Uniform Commercial Code.”
Management Masters called the note due, and when Pixton did not repay the $12 million, Management Masters held a public auction to sell Pixton’s 17-percent equity stake. Management Masters then purchased the stake with a credit bid. No money is actually exchanged, but Pixton no longer has equity in the company.
Jennifer Holloway, whose Holloway Security Services, provides consulting services to the security industry and specializes in acquisitions, financing, due diligence, and asset preparation, said this was an unusual, but understandable, transaction.
“The lender is considered the ‘secured party’ if the borrower has granted the lender a security interest in collateral to secure the loan,” she said. “If the lender is a secured party they can call the entire loan due and payable in full or take possession of part or all of the collateral which secures the loan in order to satisfy the debt. Upon an event of default, the lender typically has the discretion to choose the most appropriate remedy, while providing the borrower proper notice and allowing the borrower the opportunity to ‘cure’ the default.”
Pixton did not respond to Security Systems News’ requests for comments on this story.
Since its founding, Platinum Protection has been owned by the six founders—Pixton, Keith Dyer, Derrick Shutz, Jared Hallows, Jacob Pruitt and Chance Allred—and the Jacobson family. Kindfuller did not disclose the individuals’ percentage of ownership. The purchase enlarges the Jacobson’s ownership stake by 17 percent, something Kindfuller characterized as a “positive public statement of [the Jacobson family’s] commitment to Plantinum and to our successful future.”
The five remaining founders are all actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, Kindfuller noted.
The auction clears the way for Platinum to move forward with its business plan, Kindfuller said. “The board of Platinum has approved a very aggressive five-year plan for the company. In order to move forward with the plan we needed to make sure we had the correct structure in place to be successful,” he said. “Platinum has money in the bank; we’re actively working on recruiting for the 2011 season and we’re finishing up a very successful summer.”

MIAMISBURG, Ohio—For 31 years, access control manufacturer Matrix Systems has been selling directly to the end user, “which made us oil and water with the dealer marketplace,” said Jim Russell, VP of sales at Matrix. Now, however, with a new product offering based on Mercury panels and HID protocol, the company is actively looking for dealers and thinks it has a combination of product and service offerings that will be very attractive for integrators looking to grow with access control.
“We’re being very honest,” said Russell. “We have these legacy customers, and we service them with our legacy product, and we’re not putting that out there for dealer distribution. But these new products are for dealer distribution.” The company will keep those legacy contacts—which included the likes of Miami International Airport, Texas A&M, and Kodak—but “now everything else is fair game.”
It’s even possible, he said, as dealer relations develop, that some of those legacy customers might be transitioned to dealer partners. “We’re transitioning from a method we’ve always used to a new method, and that transition won’t happen overnight,” Russell said. “Does that sound like a conflicting message? Yes. But this is how we’re doing it.”
So, why should dealers be interested in Matrix, considering the wide variety of access control manufacturers that are already serving the dealer community?
“We get a lot of grapevine information,” said James Young, Matrix president, “that dealers are frustrated with some of their vendors.” Matrix, he said, will focus on dealer support, offering design services, for example, and treating dealers with the same attention to detail the company has used in supporting its end user clients over the past 30 years. “We’ve done this longer than our competitors,” Young said, “and now we’re willing to do it for you. And give you all the service and support that an end user would need, and treat you just like a customer and grow the relationship that way.”
Young also said Matrix would likely be able to deliver customers that approach the company in search of a solution to an access control problem other companies just can’t fix. “We’ve got a new opportunity right now,” he said, “a very large municipal customer that found Matrix just by googling—which shows you how desperate they are. They’ve got three local VARs supporting them on their legacy system, and even though it’s one of the big names, they are absolutely so fed up with the lack of service and support and willingness to work with them, that they literally let their agreements expire and called us up.”
“The dealers are not being taken care of,” echoed Russell. “They’re starving for someone who has an interest in them, other than, ‘Meet these quotas and, by the way, we won’t train or support you.’ We’re going to provide added services, we’re putting people in your district and they’ll be lead producers for you. The regional sales managers will be an extension of you. We’re not going to flood the market with dealers. We’ll be careful with whom we choose and we just want to support the heck out of them.”
Matrix is currently near 100 employees, and has just built a new headquarters here that consolidates manufacturing and sales operations under one roof. Russell said the company began signing up dealers as of July 6, and is focusing initially on the Mid-Atlantic states, the greater Chicago area, and the pipeline from New Jersey up through Boston and New England.

SANDY CITY, Utah—This Salt Lake City suburb has somehow managed to lower its false alarm rate to almost nothing over the last 24 years, trimming false alarm calls consistently despite an increase in the number of monitored alarms. Its false alarm “problem” has been steadily going away since 1986—when the false alarm rate was 2.64 percent. What are they doing that the rest of the country isn’t?
Since the mid-eighties, police and security representatives from this metro-Salt Lake bedroom community of 100,000 have come together for a PACT Meeting (Police/Alarm company Cooperative Taskforce), a once-a-month breakfast with a singular purpose: to discuss false alarm reduction efforts and best practices. The 24-year effort has paid off amazingly, with Sandy City, Utah maintaining one of the lowest false alarm rates in the country, according to the Sandy City Police.
“In May 2010 our residential false alarm rate was .12 … we’re at about one false alarm every eight-and-one-half years,” said SCPD alarm coordinator Duff Astin. “Our commercial—so that’s banks, stores, restaurants, schools and everything else—is .51, which is once every two years. Combine them both together and it’s about .22, so a little less than once every four years on average. That’s extremely low. We’ve been doing very well.”
It’s not just the false alarm ordinance Sandy City’s got in place, it’s the cooperation among the municipality, the industry and competing alarm companies, as well, that has really made the difference, according to Astin. “We just get together and get it done. Sometimes it’s five or six jurisdictions, sometimes it’s just one or two,” Astin said. “It’s interesting, because you get competing companies sitting next to each other and one will say, ‘Jeez, we’re having such a problem with X, Y and Z.’ And the guy next to him will be like, ‘Try this. This is what worked for us.’”
Utah Alarm Association president Will Naegle—owner of Salt Lake-based Alarm Control—agreed cooperation between companies that were normally rivals made everyone stronger. “Having the PACT meeting is huge … We have a forum to get together and talk about these issues specifically. And it’s repeated—it’s not once a year, it’s once a month,” Naegle said. “We recognize that we can’t waste police resources on false alarms. We need to help new alarm dealers avoid the pitfalls—sort of mentor them to avoid false alarms. Because we all get painted with the same brush … If they pollute the atmosphere with false alarms and not training their customers properly—there are so many causes of false alarms—then we all get the black eye.”
Sandy City currently asks that alarm owners register, but does not require registration to ensure response. The ordinance, which Astin said is “really lenient to our citizens,” allows four false alarms in a rolling 12-month period. On the fifth false alarm within the past 365-day period there is a $110 fee levied. The $110 fee continues with each subsequent offense until the violator drops below four falses in the past 365 days.

OJAI, Calif.—NextAlarm’s dealer arm, VoIPAlarm, is touting a patent issued in May that covers the company’s method of transmitting alarm signals and two-way voice over IP. The company’s patented process is reliable, according to VoIPAlarm CTO Bryan Field-Elliot, and the service is ready for dealers to begin transferring their accounts to broadband.
But isn’t broadband unreliable when it comes to alarm signals? Some argue complaints about unreliability are perhaps overblown, and consumers’ fears founded in confusion over the technology.
“Quite simply what we’ve done is broken the cycle of continually selling expensive equipment and monitoring contract upgrades and said you can keep your existing equipment no matter how old it is—it can be 10 years old, 15 years old—add this adapter for around a hundred bucks and you can keep your monitoring company,” Field-Elliot said. “You don’t have to switch to us. We’ll monitor it over broadband and then retransmit all those alarm signals to the alarm monitoring company you already have.”
Field-Elliot said NextAlarm began R&D-ing a solution to the VoIP problem around 2005 when they started getting a lot of “failure to communicate” errors as their monitored customers switched to VoIP companies like Vonage for phone service. “There are several different ways for an alarm system to communicate over broadband. The most obvious is that if you have a brand new panel that speaks broadband natively, then that’s a no-brainer. What we’ve built with VoIPAlarm is what we believe is the most cost-effective way to retrofit the tens of millions of panels that are out there to work flawlessly over broadband. It’s not the only way, but we believe it’s the best as well as the cheapest way,” Field-Elliot said. “What we developed was an adapter along with a backend infrastructure that the adapter communicates with so that we can continue to monitor their system over broadband. And it doesn’t matter if they have VoIP or not. All it really does is switch their alarm system from POTS to broadband. And it very neatly solves the voice-over-IP problem since their alarm systems no longer have to communicate over their VoIP line.”
According to a NextAlarm release, the new patent—NextAlarm’s second—covers their method of converting two-way voice for communication over VoIP. VoIPAlarm allows any alarm company or monitoring station to receive legacy alarm panel or PERS device signals over IP. Other features offered by VoIPAlarm include electronic notifications of alarm events, NextView IP video cameras, and a branded customer portal allowing end users to take full advantage of the technology.
But what about bandwidth issues and ISP outages one hears about?
“The legitimate concern is, ‘What if my Internet connection goes down? It seems like every few weeks, my Internet goes down for a half-hour,’” Field-Elliot said. “Our head-end is in constant contact with all of our customers’ adapters and we know within two or three minutes when and if a connection goes down and we can notify the central station, the dealer or the customer within minutes … That kind of real-time supervision is not possible with POTS, where the polling norm is once every 24 hours.”

SPARTANBURG, S.C.—County officials here are sure they’ve got it right this time. Following up on a story originally reported by Security Systems News in December of last year, the Spartanburg County Council has approved and enacted what it feels is a fair, effective, and non-constitution-violating, false alarm ordinance, effective July 1.
At the time of the first SSN story on Spartanburg’s ordinance woes, County Councilman David Britt said the county definitely needed an ordinance but couldn’t have something that violated people’s rights. “We knew that we had to do something because it was costing us so much money. We wrote an ordinance that we thought would address the problem,” Britt said. “But once it was put in place I started getting immediate response from my constituents—very able business people—saying ‘What’s going on?’ There was a provision that basically said any county official could come on your property to inspect your alarm.”
The problem needed to be solved and retired police chief and SIAC law enforcement liaison Glen Mowrey—having read the SSN article—reached out to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office. Mowrey began working with Sheriff Chuck Wright to wrangle the ordinance into line. “Some sheriffs, they’re hesitant to do what they have to because, you see, people vote for them. Not Chuck,” Mowrey said. “He said, ‘I’ve got a responsibility to be a good steward of the taxpayers’ money. This is not good stewardship.’”
Sheriff Wright said the help from SIAC was welcome and the cooperation led to a mutually satisfying solution. “Glen came to me and made an appointment. Now the first thing we noticed in our first reading of that first ordinance was that it had a lot of ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ in it and it sounded like big government, so Glen offered me this model ordinance and he said, ‘You can tailor this to be whatever you want it to be,’” Wright said. “So I assembled a team together made from someone from administration over at the County Council, somebody from dispatch, me and the chief and we all sat down and went over this ordinance … There’s no hidden fees in this now, which I like. My point and my goal is that this is just about stopping false alarms. It worked out very well.”
The new ordinance, based upon the SIAC model ordinance, has a standard fine schedule. The first two false alarms in a calendar year are free. The third, fourth and fifth false alarms at an address in one year lead to a $50 fine. It’s $100 for the sixth and seventh, $250 for the eighth and ninth, and $500 for the 10th and up. Schools, churches and other municipal buildings are not excluded from the ordinance and there is no fee associated with registering a system.
In a time when municipalities are slashing budgets, Wright said it was important for everyone to do their part to save money and resources. “I serve the community and I want to respond to alarms and there’s a need, but our whole point is that people need to make an effort. Everybody should be doing their part to save money instead of spending like a bunch of drunken sailors,” Wright said. “When I have to spend, I have to spend, but when I don’t have to, I should be looking around for where I can save. The money that’s provided to me through the budget is not my money, it’s the people’s money.”
 

IRVING, Texas—Tonja Jenkins, well known security industry executive, died Saturday, July 4, the Electronic Security Association announced this week.
“It is with the deepest sense of loss that I must inform my colleagues of the untimely death of Tonja Jenkins on Saturday night,” said Merlin Guilbeau, ESA executive director in a letter to ESA members. Jenkins was 50.
“As many of you know, Tonja was the associate executive director of the Electronic Security Association. Anyone who knew Tonja understands the tremendous, positive impact she had on this association and the industry at large,” he said.  
Guilbeau noted that Jenkins “loved what she did and was a driving force in many of the successes of the association. Many programs, including the Young Security Professionals and Executive Strategic Partners, were products of her tenacity and vision. She will be profoundly missed.”  
The family has asked that their privacy be respected at this time.
Jenkins was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1960 and leaves behind her husband of 30 years, Christopher Jenkins; her children, Randi and Julian Jenkins; and her grandchildren, Ryan Johnson and Jackson Jenkins.
The funeral service will be held on Friday, July 9, 2010 at 1:30 pm CDT at First Euless Church in the small chapel: 1000 Airport Freeway, Euless, Texas, 817-267-3313, www.firsteuless.com.
Immediately following the service, a graveside service will be held at Bear Creek Cemetery on Bear Creek Cemetery Road. There is no street address but driving directions can be found on the website, www.bearcreekcemetery.com. Immediately following the graveside service, a gathering of family and friends will take place at Bear Creek Golf Club, 3500 Bear Creek Court, Dallas, Texas, 972-456-3200, www.bearcreek-golf.com.
A fund has been established to assist the family with funeral expenses. In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to: Jenkins Funeral Trust, P.O. Box 613305, Dallas, Texas, 75261-3305. Those traveling from out of town for the services may book a $79 room ($89 with breakfast) at the DFW South Courtyard Marriott: DFW South Courtyard Marriott, 2280 Valley View Lane, Irving, Texas 972-790-8990.