Few Family starts anew

GREENVILLE, S.C.--Members of the Few family, past owners of Criticom International, opened a new monitoring station in Greenville, S.C., on July 15. The new venture is known as King Monitoring Group. Robert Few, along with his father, Tom Few, Sr., sister Kathleen, and brother Jeff joined with the Brown family, who sold their central station, Southeast Monitoring, a few years ago. "The Brown family are our partners," said Robert Few, who will be overseeing operations at the new company. "They owned Southeastern Alarms and sold out to ADT many moons ago. Just by sheer coincidence, they were thinking the same thing that we were." Few said that currently the new company has 15 operators and within the first year of opening will have 125,000 accounts. "We made about a million dollar investment in an 8,000-square-foot facility" that King built from the ground up here. "It's a central location, where a dealer can call in, analyze bills, and everyone's centrally located. We have a hot redundant facility in Oakland, N.J., so if there ever was a problem, we can continue to monitor accounts." Few said his philosophy is based on customer service. "It all comes down to the level of service you can provide. With us it's simple because it's a start-up. We can do things right off the bat that will change the way our central works." Starting up the new company "just came at the opportune time [following Criticom's sale, with IASG, to Protection One]," said Few. It lent "the ability to start fresh from nothing and start from scratch again ... there's a lot of excitement with that," he said. "If you can spend 20 years in the industry and grow along the way, and say, 'If I had to do it again I'd do it this way,' and that opportunity opened up--I had to jump on it. We've got, as far as I'm concerned, the best operations management, customer care and finance in the industry all working together." Why the move to South Carolina? "We came here because the south is the best customer service in the country, and has a nice climate," said Few. "Their slogan is 'smiling faces, beautiful places,' and that's how it is." After the opening date for of July 15, "Probably down the road we'll have a ribbon cutting ceremony and do a big kick-off," said Few.