Boon Edam sustains double-digit growth rate

LILLINGTON, N.C.—Boon Edam, a global company that specializes in secure entry solutions, continues its strong double-digit growth rate as demand for its products increases both here in the U.S. and globally, according to Boon Edam CEO Mark Borto.

“Our growth rate has been around 20 percent over the last seven years, and our overall revenue has tripled in that time span from the low tens of millions to pushing $100 million now,” Borto told Security Systems News, noting that that double-digit growth rate will continue for the foreseeable future.

“Our company here in the Americas has been in existence for a little more than 30 years, and what we have seen in the last half decade is the demand for anti-tailgating products has gone from infancy to early adopter stage to now it is just starting to move into a mass-utilization phase,” Borto explained. “Our go-to-market strategy has included both pull through from the end user at the top, and also push through from the bottom through resellers like the security integrators.”

He said that more and more end users are starting to see the value of stopping and preventing unauthorized entries into their buildings.

“Tailgating and piggybacking is that last piece that cannot be stopped with a traditional access control system,” he explained. “The focus on end users has helped us to not only tap into that demand but also to create that latent demand, because in many cases the tailgating and piggybacking issue is known but most of the time the solution or fix to that isn't readily known.”

He continued, “So many times we are doing a lot of end-user education, specifier education, particularly with security consultants and even education with the integrators who provide that reseller and consultant role as well, to let them know what solutions are available; we are seeing more of a steady deployment over the last five to seven years.”

Borto said that the company is also experiencing “a rapid rise into the lobby/optical turnstile market; those are the typical swinging or sliding glass turnstiles in lobbies that provide the initial detection and screening of entrants into the building. That is an area we really didn't join until about 10 years ago and we have been gaining market share at a very rapid clip; today, we are one of the top three providers in that market.”

To sustain the company's overall growth, it has made a large investment in its sales and customer service organizations.

“Today we have more than two dozen sales people across North America both in the field and in our HQ in Lillington, N.C., to serve those customers and to reach out to them,” he explained. “Plus, we've got the largest and broadest product range of any competitor, and tend to be more of a one-stop shop than our competitors as well.”

The emphasis over the last three to four years, he explained, has “begun to shift more toward the entire experience of either a security integrator or end user that purchases our product,” he said. “Because the company is relatively unique (we are by no means ubiquitous within the security industry), there is quite a bit of support and assistance that is needed through the initial selling cycle—prior, during and after the installation—as well as service, maintenance, etc., all through the lifecycle of the product. So we have developed a customer support team to do all of that on behalf of the stakeholders and that often ends up being far more of a value to the end user and to the resellers than the product itself.”

Another strategic focus is on expanding product training specifically geared toward the security integrator group.

“It is great that we've got staffing and resources in place to work with them, to help them, to support them, but long-term the growth of the product and its further use is not going to take off until the security integrators can be self-sufficient in selling, installing and servicing the product—just like they are with all of their other products that they represent in much larger numbers,” Borto noted. “So a large part of our growth from this point forward will be on trying to enable the technical expertise for the installation and service of our products, and to enable and train and educate the sales staffs of the security integrators—to ramp up their comfort and knowledge level.”