Guardian Protection nabs third-largest Brink's/Broadview dealer

PITTSBURGH, Pa.—In an indication that Guardian Protection Services is moving beyond its super-regional roots and is serious about becoming a national player, the company announced Aug. 26 that Southern Alarm, the third-largest Brink's/Broadview dealer, is now a Guardian dealer.

Southern Alarm “has ranked as the top second or third Brink's dealer for seven years now,” said owner Kelley Clements. Based in Richmond Hills Ga., the company has branch offices in Augusta, Ga. and Charleston, S.C., has 35 employees and averages “about 180 installs per month.”

With Southern Alarm as an authorized dealer, Guardian builds on a quiet expansion it has undertaken over the past year, said Hank Groff, national director of Guardian's Authorized Dealer Program. This expansion has taken Guardian beyond its well-established super-regions in the Mid-Atlantic, Chicago area, Florida and Texas to elsewhere in the country.

“In the last 12 months we've moved into additional areas, [signing up new authorized dealers] in northern Florida, in Houston, Texas, and into the states of Utah and California, where we never were before. Now with Georgia and South Carolina, we've added two more states.”

And it's not stopping there, Groff said. Guardian will “entertain a partnership with dealers in any area of the United States if it's the right fit, if they meet our standards of quality,” he said.

Groff said Guardian's authorized dealers are treated the same as its branch offices: “We make a lot of resources available to dealers. They're not just a marketing arm for us, we treat them like a part of the family.”

Clements said he was wooed by five dealer programs at the ISC West show in March, and within the next 30 days narrowed his decision to two potential dealer programs. He settled on Guardian, he said, because “it has similar values to Brink's where the emphasis was on quality of accounts rather than quantity.”

When Broadview Security was acquired by ADT this spring, all of its dealers and branches were acquired as well. Dealers have the option to leave ADT when their contracts expire. Clements' contract expired recently, and he believes he may be the first dealer to leave the ADT program.