IRes enters market with Web model

BUFFALO, N.Y.--Similar to the Web-based consumer sales model that has taken hold via Amazon.com and iTunes, manufacturer iRes Technology has entered the security surveillance market with a Web-based sales model for installers and integrators.

“From a business perspective,” said Joel Kligman, iRes president and a former co-founder of Lorex and Digimerge, “we were dissatisfied with the traditional channels of distribution, especially for a newcomer. It's extremely difficult to break in, and expensive and time-consuming. And the end result is a higher cost for the customers ... So we thought it was time for a more innovative approach.”

While Kligman praised distributors like Tri-Ed and ADI for their service and the training and other benefits associated with their businesses, we “need to get our products and message to the market in the most direct and efficient way possible.”

That message will focus, initially, on high-resolution analog cameras, what Kligman called “the bread and butter of the industry.” He said the “higher end” of the industry is transitioning “very quickly” to IP cameras, but “that's big budget installations, where there's significant bandwidth.”

IRes products begin at 420 TV lines of resolution, “and the bulk of the product is at least 520,” said Kligman.

He said he expected his customers to be focusing on the small- and medium-sized installations, and “given the current economy, we're talking about a lot of retrofit, and we don't see that users will just throw out everything that's in place in order to upgrade. So that means they'll replace analog with analog. They may display with a digital device, and store it digitally, but, from the camera's perspective, there will be a demand for the foreseeable future for analog in our mid-market area.”

IRes is offering a number of financial incentives to attract customers, including 30-day risk-free trials, 20 percent discounts introductory bonuses, and same-day shipping if you order by noon, Buffalo-time.

However, Kligman said his company is not selling solely on price. “I think I would have to agree that, to a certain extent, the sort of products that we sell right now tend to be seen as commodity products,” he said. “From experience, though, I know that in reality what appears to be a commodity product is not ... That's what we hope to demonstrate to our customers. They will get not commodity, but bread and butter products with superior performance when they compare them to other products available on the market.”

“We design our products up to a performance level,” he emphasized, “never down to a price.”