Despite economy, Iverify projects RMR growth at eight times industry forecast

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Five-year-old commercial security services company Iverify on Nov. 10 announced it expected to finish 2009 with an organic growth rate in RMR of 40 percent, which is—according to the Iverify release—eight times the overall industry forecast of 5 percent growth. According to Iverify CSO Kenny Kahn, the company has not only survived the economic climate but is thriving. How have they done it?

“We've really just had a great year—significant growth … This summer we launched our first three channel partners. They're all members of the Honeywell Dealer Network … We'll expand that a lot in 2010,” Kahn said. “We added over a hundred new employees in the last year. It's the opposite of what most people are doing.” Kahn said most of the people Iverify hires are “ex-law enforcement people, Homeland Security, former federal agents, TSA people, lots of ex-military people. So when a crisis or an event happens at a client's business, we've got a very well-prepared group of people that are both viewing and speaking.”

According to the release, Iverify has secured two substantial contracts totaling more than $200,000 in RMR, one of the largest single retail investments in remote video monitoring to date. Kahn said he wasn't at liberty to name who the accounts were.

Kahn said the difference with Iverify is that their growth has been organic as opposed to building through acquiring. “We bought this building—we're in a nearly 45,000-square-foot building—and it really is just the absolute state-of-the-art infrastructure, and we're building out the property to accommodate our growth,” Kahn said. “Much of the world has been laying people off. We acquired and laid the infrastructure in this facility, anticipating the growth and the growth has come … We've signed seven national retail chains within the last year.”

Kahn said right now, most of its sales are through its in-house sales team, but that Iverify was getting ready to ramp up a dealer program. “We are at the very start of a dealer channel,” Kahn said. “We'll be selling through people that become true partners. This isn't going to be like another dealer network. We want to engage them and we want them to engage us … it's not just find any local security contractor and let them wholesale your services. We're looking for people who truly want to partner in the world of audio and video monitoring and have a long-lasting relationship.”