Jim McMullen wants to acquire more wholesale centrals

Jim McMullen, president and COO of Lydia Security Monitoring, as well as president and COO of COPS Monitoring, is interested in purchasing more third-party central stations. Lydia's recent purchase of wholesale central station UCC was a big topic at ISC West 2016, both in COPS' booth and in UCC's.

“We would like to go out there and buy other companies that specialize in a particular segment of the [monitoring] marketplace, so that we can draw on their expertise and grow it from there,” McMullen told me.

He identified access control, video, and PERS as three areas of the monitoring industry where Lydia would be “very interested in making acquisitions,” adding that the company has plenty of financial backing to do so.

“Each company [under Lydia] will have its own personality,” according to McMullen.

He described how the three brands under Lydia Security Monitoring—COPS Monitoring, UCC, and AlarmWATCH—each have their own focus. The COPS Monitoring brand would appeal to a larger dealers with a high volume of accounts.

“If you're looking toward us for help, to teach you—the alarm company—more about how to sell, and how to market � UCC would probably be a better fit for you, because they focus on that more than [COPS does],” McMullen said.

“We're looking at AlarmWatch for, possibly, the fire sector,” he said. “They're � doing special things with fire systems.”

David Smith, COPS director of marketing and communication, stressed the separation between brands under Lydia. At ISC West 2016, Smith said, “People came into our booth and said 'yeah, I'm with UCC,' or 'We've been looking at UCC,' [and added] 'but that's you guys now, right?' And honestly, it's not. It shares an executive team, but past that � it's a whole separate entity,” Smith said.

ISC West also brought people outside the industry to COPS' booth, McMullen said. He gave the example of wearable manufacturers wanting professional monitoring for their devices.

McMullen said that the company had similar conversations at CES, talking about the possibility of professionally monitoring personal drones.