SafeStreets celebrates its 500,000th ADT customer

GARNER, N.C.—SafeStreets USA, ADT's second-largest dealer, recently secured its 500,000th customer and has set its sights on adding more.

SafeStreets, based here, is a “megadealership,” formed when three ADT dealers merged a few years ago, and it may grow again through another merger or acquisitions, according to company President Barry Simmons.

He credits SafeStreets' growth to several factors. A key one is the ADT brand. “It's well recognized. It certainly allows us to go to market with what we consider a decisive advantage,” Simmons told Security Systems News.

He also cited SafeStreets' quality service and being “out in front of some marketing trends.”

Simmons said that SafeStreets was “a pioneer” in online marketing and also does direct door-to-door sales in specific markets. It has a “superior delivery mechanism” when it comes to service, he said.

“Regardless of how a customer comes to us, … they know they can place an order for a system and we can show up either later that day or the next day and put it in and they're going to get a superior customer experience,” Simmons said.

The company's 500,000th customer was a couple in Indiana, which is one of the 28 states SafeStreets services. On June 12, to celebrate, SafeStreets “surprised the lucky homeowner with a free [ADT Pulse] system and free monitoring for three years. We showed up with balloons,” Simmons said.

He said he's already looking forward to SafeStreets' celebration of its 1 millionth ADT customer.

SafeStreets was one of ADT's first dealers back in 1996 when ADT started its authorized dealer program, Simmons said.

The company at that time was called Security Solutions and had a high-end commercial side of the business that was separate from the dealer program, Simmons said. That part of the business was sold in 2006 to Matrix and the ADT dealership began operating as Alarm Team, he said.

Then, in 2011, Alarm Team merged with two other high-performing ADT dealers: Todd Herman's EverSafe Security and Mike Robson's First Detection, Simmons said.

Alarm Team served the Southeast, EverSafe operated in the Northeast and First Detection was active in New York, Chicago and Florida, he said. So he said the merger created what he called an ADT “megadealership,” covering a wide geographic area in the East and Midwest.

“It was a very easy and smart move to make to combine the three companies and consolidate a lot of the overhead and increase our footprint at that particular point,” Simmons said.

The combined company changed its name to SafeStreets USA, of which Herman is now CEO and Robson is EVP.

Simmons said the company has more than 500 employees, including nearly 200 trained installation techs across its footprint. It has two processing centers and also has a call center in Tampa, Fla., he said.

It's a big seller of ADT Pulse, he said. “Depending on our marketing and success of that we'll be between 30,000 to 50,000 activations a year and a good 50 percent of those are Pulse-related services now,” Simmons said.

He declined to reveal specific revenue and RMR figures. However, he said growth, which initially was 15 to 20 percent after the company rapidly expanded its geographic base in the merger, remains robust. He said SafeStreets has “high single-digit growth on an annual basis.”

Expansion of the company in the future is possible, Simmons said.

SafeStreets has a network of marketing partners who assist SafeStreets with online customers who live in states outside the company's footprint, Simmons said.

“We've created a network of likeminded dealerships where we all operate on the same software platforms, we share technology, we share a lot of things, and while they're not necessarily operated by us, they operate identical to us,” Simmons explained. “So, we've been able to help ADT grow those dealerships in those areas through our affiliation, so the … next possibility is to kind of say, 'Is there any value to both ADT and our dealership as a whole where we perhaps we take this affiliated relationship to the next level and just simply expand and just have it all under one umbrella?' That's another possibility for sure.”