Per Mar acquires Wisconsin company

DAVENPORT, Iowa—Super-regional Per Mar Security is topping off a year where its residential sales outpaced recent years with the acquisition, announced this week, of Alarm-Co North Security Compnay, Inc., a boutique, high-end, residential alarm company based in Minocqua, Wis.

Brad Tolliver, vice president of Per Mar's Electronic Security Division, described Minocqua is a recreational area with “a lake and a neat little town … and a lot of multi-million dollar summer homes.” The deal, which Tolliver characterized as “small- to medium-sized,” will deliver “a nice little bump in RMR and we pick up an attractive customer base that will fold in nicely to our Wassau operation.”

The Wassau branch is the third largest of Per Mar's 21 branch offices, which are spread throughout Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska. Dennis Boettge, former owner of Alarm-Co North Security, will join Per Mar as a dealer. Ken Nerison, electronic security general manager for the Wassau branch, will oversee the transition of accounts.

Tolliver said his commercial business is down a bit, but residential is up. He said they've had a lot of success with bundled services “where we offer monitoring, a service agreement and radio backup at a competitive price.”

Per Mar has beefed up its push for service agreements with its existing customer base. When Per Mar is dispatching a service call, they now offer the customer “a service agreement in lieu of what charges would be for that day's service charges. It's turned into something nice on a weekly basis,” he said.

In addition, Per Mar is soliciting service agreements and additional services to customers who've recently had an alarm “while it's fresh in their memory,” Tolliver said.

In other areas of its business, Per Mar has introduced a PERS program across the company, building on its successful PERS program in its Eau Claire, Wis. branch.