DTT gets $20m, eyes convenience store space

LOS ANGELES—With a $5 million increase in its credit facility, DTT Surveillance intends to enter new retail verticals, Sam Naficy, DTT president and CEO, told Security Systems News.

Currently, DTT Surveillance's niche is QSR and hospitality. “We want to cross over to retail more broadly defined and are looking to make investments and accelerate growth with more staff and more office space,” he said.

DTT Surveillance on Sept. 6 announced it closed a $20 million credit facility with CapitalSource, a $5 million increase over its existing facility.

DTT provides, installs, manages and services a turnkey video surveillance solution on a subscription model for the restaurant and hospitality industries. The system integrates loss prevention and other business analytics software with surveillance cameras and DVRs “to provide operators with actionable business intelligence data,” Naficy said.

“We've worked with Sam for the past two or three years,” said Will Schmidt, managing director of CapitalSource.

“It's a great business [that] provides a unique application and interface that drives tremendous value,” he added.

DTT works with marquee customers such as McDonalds, TGIF, and Dairy Queen and says it “oversees nearly 2 million employees” of these customers.

According to this year's Inc. 5,000 list, where DTT ranked No. 1,491, the company had $14.3 million in revenue in 2010.

“We've experienced roughly 50 percent year-over-year growth over the last four to five years,” Naficy said. Its staff has grown to 230 employees since and the company recently moved to a new 40,000-square-foot space.

Naficy wants to “replicate what we do [in QSR and hospitality] ... in the convenience store space.”

Naficy said, “The quality of our customers and what we do for them is shown by our lack of attrition.” DTT's attrition rate is 5.8 percent, which compares very favorably with the 10- to 15-percent attrition rate typical for RMR-based businesses such as alarm companies, he said.