Brink's expands in Rhode Island and Florida

LINCOLN, R.I.--Brisk business prompted Brink's Home Security to open two new offices in the last quarter of 2005, one here and another in Tampa, Fla., bringing the yearly total to five new offices for the home security giant. "We've been actively working this market from the Boston office," said John Tanner, the former technical manager of the Boston office who is now general manager for the Rhode Island office. Tanner said the new office will allow Brink's to better serve its existing customer base of roughly 4,600 accounts in Rhode Island and enable expansion south of Providence. "Our plan is to start eventually serving the eastern edge of Connecticut as well," he said. The new 4,000-square-foot facility here opened the first week of December; the new Tampa office opened the first week of October. Twenty-four people, most of whom moved from the Boston office, will staff the Rhode Island office. Tanner said they wanted to send experienced workers to the new office, the Boston location will hire new employees to replace those who transferred here. Tampa general manager Kevin Oaks said Brink's has had an office in nearby Clearwater since the mid-1980s. "It's a combination of both our traditional lines of business and [Tampa's] booming housing market" that drove the need for a new office, he said. The Tampa office has three sales groups targeting these two focuses. There are two sales representatives dedicated to commercial sales and seven sales people working on Brink's traditional line of home sales, while six sales representatives work for the Brink's Home Technology Division. The latter is a sales group that deals exclusively with the new home construction market. "Right now we have 20 home technology technicians who install and pre-wire new homes for security systems and other low-voltage products such as intercoms, phones and cable," he said. The other three offices opened this year are in Atlanta, Frederick, Md., and Orlando, Fla.