Vivint set to close Washington state sales center today

PROVO, Utah—Vivint last summer opened a new 400-employee sales center in Liberty Lake, Wash., suburb of Spokane. Now, barely a year later, the home automation/home security company said it was closing the center as of today.

“Due to a reallocation of resources, the Vivint Liberty Lake office will close on June 27, 2014. At that time, all employees are eligible to receive severance, and some employees will be offered the opportunity to relocate to Provo, Utah,” according to a statement provided to Security Systems News by Starr Fowler, Vivint's VP of human resources.  

Vivint is encouraging former Liberty Lake employees to apply for other positions within the company.

Vivint CEO Todd Pedersen wouldn't answer detailed questions about the center but told SSN that the company is experiencing rapid growth and that trying out new things is standard practice for it.

“We're always testing,” Pedersen said. “… Operations chose to test the market out there. … It's not that we're scaling back [as a company]. It's just testing and reallocating things that are working better for us.”

According to reports from Washington state media, it's also unclear whether Vivint ever reached its planned goal of hiring 400 employees.

The new center was billed as part of the home automation/ home security company's plan to diversify its sales channel by increasing inside sales. Vivint has been known primarily as a door-knocking company. Vivint has said the Liberty Lake center was its second inside sales center and its first outside of Utah.

Vivint received a $150,000 incentive to open the Liberty Lake center from an economic developm