SecurityVillage.com to Use Internet to Create End-User ‘Community’

NEW YORK

SecurityVillage.com, the newest major player in the security industry via its recent acquisitions of three major central stations, says it is just getting started with its plans to change the nature of the alarm business.

Using strategic relationships, acquisitions, the Internet and its workforce of technicians able to perform residential installations, the company plans to create an electronic “community” that interconnects its alarm system end users with nearly every aspect of their lives.

“We plan to use the Internet to connect customers by aggregating information through the Internet that was previously not available,” says Peter Fidelman, president of SecurityVillage.com in an exclusive interview with Security Sales. The information to which Fidelman refers ranges from offering instant messaging, televideo, telemedical and location-based services. Other potential connections include alarms, banking, shopping and even home grocery services. These services will all be available to SecurityVillage.com’s customers via its role as an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

The company made headlines on May 17 when it announced the merger of Security Associates Intl. (SAI), King Central and Monital Signal Corp. The merger instantly brought together nearly 800,000 end users and 6,000 alarm dealers. The combined companies brought SecurityVillage.com’s revenues to $60 million annually (see June 2000 Security Sales, “Hot Newswire,” page 12).

The company already owns Supplydog.com, a distribution company, Tetra Electronic Industries, a maker of wireless video technology and Video Domain Technologies, a video manufacturer. Fidelman says more purchases of manufacturing technology are coming soon. “We see the traditional sale of alarms via the consultative [salespeople] always having a market, but a good percentage of those sales being eventually displaced by the Internet,” he predicts. He also points out that the attractiveness of the alarm business is the large service force of skilled technicians who “know how to use screwdrivers and know how to handle the needs of tomorrow’s wired home.”

Fidelman, who spent years as head of technology, business development and strategic relationships at ADT, says SecurityVillage.com’s dealer base will receive special proprietary products via distribution. For the foreseeable future, each of the companies within SecurityVillage.com will maintain its own identity and brand name, he says.

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