C.O.P.S. on the beat for DeWalt with Mobilelock

LAS VEGAS and WILLIAMSTOWN, N.J.--When tool maker DeWalt conducted extensive research on construction jobsites recently, interviewing more than 1,500 construction workers, end users and buyers, it concluded that "jobsite security" was that industry's number one concern, with 50 percent of respondents reporting having had equipment stolen in the 12 months prior to the survey alone. Enter Sitelock, a standalone alarm system for construction sites developed by DeWalt, a division of Black & Decker, with monitoring provided by C.O.P.S. Don Maden, executive vice president of C.O.P.S., said "Sitelock has proven to be popular; it's definitely a niche market. It has gone well, but DeWalt felt so many items on the construction site could be taken that the next logical step would be to incorporate a GPS-tracking mechanism." To that end, DeWalt developed Mobilelock, an alarm system featuring a GPS system that was introduced--along with the announcement of a strategic partnership with C.O.P.S.--at ISC West in March. "Necessity is the mother of invention--they learned quickly that things would disappear and GPS became necessary," said Maden. DeWalt's Mobilelock GPS locator features alarm notification that will contact up to three people via phone, text message or email. For an extra fee, professional monitoring through C.O.P.S., including mapping reference, is included. An alarm event originating from a Mobilelock unit will come into the C.O.P.S. central station as a standard alarm event, said Maden, but "if we need to do [GPS] tracking, there is a specialized group that will take it to the next level." Bill Pugh, group marketing manager for DeWalt's security business group, said, "We already had an existing relationship with C.O.P.S. through our Sitelock product. We'd gone to them originally as a best-of-breed monitoring service and we've been very happy with the service they've provided. We're offering our product through C.O.P.S. first, so they have the opportunity to market it to their dealers." Maden added, "The reason why this product differs so much from Sitelock is that one of the distributor channels that DeWalt is looking to tap is the dealer market. They realize the importance of the alarm dealer in the equation. We have over 2,000 alarm dealers, so for us this is a complement to services that dealers are selling," said Maden. "This is a great offering for someone who does pre-wiring; they can offer a product while a home is being built. We think people like that and dealers who work on commercial jobs will be able to capitalize on this." In addition, "The price points we're putting out there will be aggressive enough to compete with other GPS providers. This is a true complement to what dealers do--it's all about the recurring business," said Maden.