Should You Pledge to Allegion?
Executive management and employees celebrate Allegion's recent debut as a standalone, publicly-traded company following its spinoff from Ingersoll Rand.
What was it like in December declaring the process complete and opening NYSE trading? That must have been pretty exciting.
Eckersley: It’s been phenomenal, in a certain way a conclusion to a rather exciting and yet very heavy workload period of 12 months as we’ve gotten the company ready to spin out. Then in another sense it was the start of something brand new. It was one of those transition points where you step back and say, “We completed all this heavy lifting and work necessary to effectively create a $2 billion startup,” and all the things necessary to accomplish that.
It’s just the beginning of a brand-new growth business in the marketplace. It was a lot of fun being up in New York ringing the bell, and participating in all those activities. Now it’s about putting your nose down and starting to grind through the work necessary to make this a great company on a going-forward basis.
How do you make a big change like this transparent as well as deliver more benefits to existing customers?
Eckersley: If we do our jobs properly, the impact to our customers should almost be nonexistent, no impact whatsoever. We will now have a capital structure and investment strategy 100% tightly focused on the security industry, which allows us the opportunity to drive enhancements in our product portfolio and investments in our business.
Our customers, particularly in the Americas, have long thought that being part of a broader industrial conglomerate has sometimes forced us to have less priority focus on the security industry than they would like us to have. For the most part we’ve had very positive reflections from our customers. So far now there has been zero impact in terms of delivery to our customers and support of our customers. All our external constituents see the growth potential and the effort we have going forward to continue to drive innovation into the security space.
What is the immediate marketing and branding approach?
Eckersley: Right now we’re experiencing a bit of halo associated with the launch of the Allegion brand into the marketplace. We are still being actively advertised in Times Square on the marquee boards. We still have a pretty visible representation at the New York Stock Exchange now.
We will continue to go to market under our strategy brands, as well. We’re putting a heavy emphasis on our Schlage brand, as well as Allegion in the consumer B2C [business to consumer] space. We’re focused on driving the message of the legacy and security of our mechanical platforms and the opportunity that exists as we introduce more electronic capabilities to the industry. Be that our electronic locks or our aptiQ credential platform, aptiQ Mobile, which is the virtual smartphone-based credential platform we launched in November.
There’s a lot going on and we’re still getting a lot of benefit from the investments that have been made in launching the Allegion brand as an umbrella brand to our strategic brands in the market.
What is most important for customers to associate with the Allegion name?
Eckersley:
We expect the Allegion name will represent that global platform. Depending on where you are in the world, Allegion through its strategic brands will be providi
ng that level of security and the solutions needed for you to feel safe and secure.
The most important thing from our perspective is that our customers continue to see us as a team of experts, capable of providing those solutions, whether that’s through our Schlage product portfolio or Bocom [public safety video surveillance] portfolio, or some of the other things we do in the marketplace on the electronics side. It’s this team of people who have the skills, capability and expertise around codes, standards and the needs of the marketplace in order to provide them the most appropriate solutions. That is what I would hope the vast majority of our customers would get as the primary value proposition of our business and the Allegion name.
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About the Author
Scott Goldfine
Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].
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