KingAlarm heading to Trinidad
Published:Friday | July 23, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Mark Titus, Business Reporter
KingAlarm Services Limited, now celebrating its first decade in operation, is about to move to the next level by testing new markets overseas even as it adds new business lines and offices in its home market.
By March 2011, the electronic security company hopes to be established in Trinidad, but is still going through the process of approvals and permits.
"We have been getting calls from as far back as three years ago to expand elsewhere in the Caribbean," said Managing Director John P. Azar, "but we are now at a point that our structure is sufficient, where we are poised for growth and expansion."
Azar was unwilling to speak to the size of the investment he is making, but his plans include setting up operations in Port-of-Spain, akin to his operation in Kingston.
KingAlarm, though it has been in business since 2000, has offered business from one location - Caledonia Avenue - from where it also deploys response teams.
But Azar said Monday, in a Financial Gleaner interview, that just three weeks ago, KingAlarm established a presence in Montego Bay, a current hotbed of crime and scams.
Trinidad, too, is in the headlines for murders that are approaching 300 so far this year, including reports of two dismemberments this week - still well below Jamaica's more than 880 count, year to date - but that country also faces problems with kidnappings, though that problem seems to have abated from three years ago.
KingAlarm's planned entry comes amid a drive by the Trinidad and Tobago Government to have that country's corps of more than 20,000 private security officers more involved in the country's crime-fighting strategy.
Azar, other directors and executives of the family-run company, will have to hurdle fit and proper tests.
KingAlarm is the second security firm, behind the Guardsman Group, to express interest in the twin-island republic, but when contacted, Chairman Kenny Benjamin, who also operates subsidiaries in St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia and Barbados, all but wrote off the possibility of his company setting up shop there.
"It's too saturated," he said.
Azar, however, says KingAlarm plans to seek out its own niche in surveillance, and points to Marks Shields as an ace it can play. Shields recently joined the board and is available to the company in an advisory capacity.
The former policeman, a Scotland Yard veteran and Jamaica's deputy police com-missioner for five years, who has launched his own security consultancy, has expertise in investigating terrorism, kid-nappings, intelligence gathering, covert surveillance and hostage negotiation.
Shields will play a crucial role as the KingAlarm brand expands throughout the region, Azar told the Financial Gleaner.
Otherwise: "The name that we have established for ourselves here in Jamaica is a good platform from which we can expand," he said.
"We have spent a lot of time in the last 10 years to build a strong solid brand, with a strong and solid management team, most of which have been with us since inception."
Locally, the company has a network of 42,000 clients at over 7,500 locations, with response units in Kingston and Montego Bay supported by a staff complement of 220, with 90 being armed officers.
The firm recently acquired a fleet of armoured sport utility vehicles to be used in an exclusive escort service targeting dignitaries and other high-profile personalities, and will soon introduce investigation arm to its operation.
Responding to calls from key clients for high-end security, the company will shortly be introducing an elite batch of specially trained security personnel, which will be for a smaller, more exclusive market.
"We have been pushed by some of our key clients to get into it," Azar said.
"These security officers will be better trained, better screened, have a solid education and will be ideally prepared for the high-end customer."
The service, he said, "is not going to be cheap", and will be targeted at a smaller, more specialised market.
Currently, KingAlarm customer base has a 50:50 ratio - residential to commercial - including embassies, government ministers, and others.