2014 year of acquisitions for B Safe

WILMINGTON, Del.—B Safe, a regional security company based here, has acquired Total Security of Newark, Del. The acquisition comes on the heels of two recent buys B Safe made in New Jersey, and the company has its sights set on more.

“We're not finished yet for 2014,” Mary Cakir, customer service manager for the company, which provides security and life safety solutions in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, told Security Systems News. “There will be several more this year.”

B Safe now has about 9,800 customers and about $280,000 in RMR, she said.

The purchase of Total Security and its 414 accounts gives B Safe “additional strength where we already have offices,” company President Philip Gardner, who founded the company more than 35 years ago, said in a prepared statement.

Cakir said Total Security's former customers—about 70 percent residential and 30 percent commercial—will be serviced from B Safe's nearby office here.

B Safe, which has about 40 employees, gained two more in the deal, a Total Security technician and that company's former owner, who will do installations for B Safe. “It's by choice,” Cakir explained. “He likes to do that sort of stuff.”

She said the fact that B Safe offers its clients interactive services, which Total Security “hadn't stepped up to as yet,” helped draw the owner to B Safe.

“He said he was looking to work with a progressive company that sells cutting edge technology and delivers world class service,” Cakir said. “He had heard good things about us and he called and we sat down and talked to him.”

B Safe was attracted to Total Security, which had been in business for nearly two decades, because “they have a sound customer base and their installations were top quality,” Cakir said. She said Total Security's clients will benefit from the enhanced services B Safe can offer them.

She declined to discuss terms of the deal, other than to say it was “a win-win for the customers and the companies.”

Earlier this year, the company announced it was expanding its New Jersey presence with two acquisitions there that brought in 2,000 accounts and $75,000 in RMR.

Why all the buying activity in 2014?

Cakir said it's simply because “opportunities present themselves” and that as B Safe grows, it makes it easier to “broaden our horizons” and acquire other companies.