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SIS goes to Washington

SIS goes to Washington Growth into greater Missouri requires centralization

WASHINGTON, Mo.--Mark Holguin moved his 15-year-old business here from St. Peters for a variety of reasons. "Basically, all of our work is in St. Louis, but we're expanding into the other side of Missouri and we decided to centralize the location." Plus, "I got married to a gal from Washington and she wanted to move closer to her mom." Not that his Security Information Systems is a mom-and-pop operation. Holquin said his company's five full-time and 15 subcontracted employees do access control and surveillance for the likes of Boeing, Verizon and a number of regional airports and pharmaceutical companies. Often, he said, SIS will team with Burnes-Citadel Security, owned by Terry Crouch, to tackle jobs in St. Louis, letting Burnes-Citadel handle the access control while SIS does the CCTV. However, Holguin said St. Louis is getting very competitive and he has recently looked to expand outside the city. "Our headquarters will be here in Washington," Holquin said, "but we will have a satellite office down toward St. Genevieve, and then we also want to go to Rolla." He said as he moves into the countryside his competition is many smaller operations installing merchandise they buy from the Internet. "They are underbidding us by a lot," he said, but his sales pitch about using established companies with established business offices and workman's compensation insurance often wins him the job, he said. SIS has a dealer relationship with S2 Security for access control, "and for the rest of it," said Holguin, "we have a good relationship with Security Equipment Supply in St. Louis. It's nice to have a middle man when you have a problem."

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