Sister companies aid expansion

ORLANDO, Fla. - When a company is looking to expand its services nationally, it doesn’t hurt to be a part of a larger group of companies that can offer diverse services to an existing customer base. That’s the case at Marlin Central Monitoring, which has implemented an aggressive plan to do business in all 50 states by the end of 2005. Marlin Central is part of the Marlin Group, which also includes medical, logistics and e-sourcing companies. Barry Brannon, the company’s new president, recognized the potential to offer one-stop shopping to existing dealers and customers through the Marlin Group companies. “We may already have something along the lines of a call center or fulfillment or logistics that we can help dealers with,” he said. “We’ve got several dealers in south Florida who do business in Canada or Puerto Rico or South America. So if they can utilize our other sister companies to fulfill their needs in shipping security products or anything of that nature to those countries, that will certainly help them keep their costs down.” Brannon said Marlin Central is also making a push using personal emergency response systems to customers of the medical group. “[Many of those customers] are aged, homebound or they just have physical impairments so they would like additional safety of the ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ scenario of security,” he said. To that end, Marlin has set up an internal network to help those customers with everything from supplying products to billing Medicare. And, Brannon said, Marlin is offering its dealers an opportunity to sell and service these systems. “We’re not in the installation business and we’re not competing with our dealers,” he said. “We’ll put all the service and installation out to our dealers.” With the push to take the company nationwide, this cross-pollination within the Marlin Group can only be helpful for both Marlin Central and its dealers, Brannon said. “I’ll be continuing to look for dealers who want to take over certain territories in areas of the country to handle the service of those customers,” he said. “That’s certainly another route that I will take to expand our customer base.”