Koorsen spins off integration firm

INDIANAPOLIS—Koorsen Fire & Security has spun off a new firm, to be located in new headquarters nearby and owned by president Randy Koorsen's daughter Kelly Hoffman, with brothers Brian, Keith, and Scott as minority shareholders. Koorsen Security Technology will focus on high-end integration work, while Fire & Security will remain focused on fire alarm installation and service and residential security and light commercial.

“I'm sort of the instigator behind this,” said Randy Koorsen. The fire business that we've grown up with for more than 60 years is not a real dynamic business. When we got into the security side of the business, we really entered it as an integrator, an access and CCTV company ... We kept thinking it would be a real nice add-on to our fire business, but we really never blended it as well as we'd hoped. It's more technical; it's more about what the end users' need instead of code compliance. And we began to realize that it was a different enough business to move it out of our Indy offices.”

As evidence, Koorsen, despite being an older company, only has about 9,000 security accounts. Jack Rosebrough has come over from Protection One to grow Fire & Security's RMR-based side of the security business, said Skip Sampson, Koorsen Security Technology VP, and “they may do one- or two-door access, smaller commercial jobs, but the idea is for the two groups to work together, and if they hit something that's bigger than what [Fire & Security] can handle, it should go to the Technology group, and if [Technology] finds burg and monitoring, they'll share those leads.”

However, don't think that Security Technology doesn't understand the value of RMR for growing that business. “They get that side of the business,” Koorsen said. They've contracted with Integrator Support for hosted access and video services, for example, and Koorsen said service revenue will be an integral party of Koorsen Security Technology's business plan.

Sampson also noted that, with Hoffman as owner, Security Technology will be going for federal WBE certification, “and we're real excited about what that might do for us. It used to be just the government looking for that, but now anyone with federal money has to have a percentage of their spend in WBE and diversity and we're seeing it everywhere.”