are a hot selling market, inviting companies from various industries to offer their services. Leading ISP’s have already showed keen interest in the security biz, with Verizon offering a range of services and Comcast recently making their foray. With that, one of the most popular camera companies, Polaroid, is now set to take on the industry.
All set for a June launch, the consumer electronics giant has a complete set of offerings for the video surveillance security market including IP Cameras, NVRs, DVRs, Hybrid Video Recorders and Video Management Software. Polaroid believes that since it is such a well-known brand, the industry as well as consumers will be very receptive toward it, and Polaroid’s venture will be a successful one. Despite the stiff competition that it will be set against, Polaroid believes that when one of their salesmen steps ahead to talk to a potential customer, he will receive the due attention, owing to the reputation Polaroid has created over the years.
Polaroid, as an instant-camera company, we feel is a perfect fit and a great story to use the company name.”
In order to ensure the highest quality of products, services and customer support for its consumers, Polaroid has taken some firm steps. First of all, they have decided to wait until June for a grand launch so that they can have a full-fledged inventory before their services go on the market. Secondly, the company plans to sell its products using a unique system.
Nathan Needel, Executive Vice President, Polaroid characterized their system as “true” security systems integrator partners in the channel. He mentioned that they will only be taking on a very limited set of integrators so that each one can be trained on their systems. They want the end user to receive service from true technicians who are specially trained for the job, to meet every end user requirement.
Our regional integrators are highly trained and have a protected territory,” he said. “For example, say the market is Chicago; it is our intention to only have a handful of integrators in that market. In this way, the integrator can go out to his customers and not have to worry about a smaller company that doesn’t have all of the overhead of the office, phones, vehicles, and technician training, etc., and having to compete with them.”
Needel said that Polaroid already had 40 integrators and plans to take up 100. Each integrator will be able to provide specialized services for Polaroid.
We want integrators that have real technicians with the proper trucks, tools and office to represent Polaroid as we expect to be represented.”
However, one thing to be noted is that Polaroid is targeting enterprises and large business, instead of individual consumers.
Low-end and consumer is not what we’re doing. What our sales effort focuses on is enterprise environments – airports, seaports, universities, K-12, and multi-location retail,” he explained. “For the efficiency of the sales organization, we want to work with end users that have a small number of decision makers who control dozens or hundreds of locations.”
So while the corporate consumers are set to receive some more services and , home security systems consumers may still have to wait for Polaroid.
Emily Stevenson
Author – Emily is a 10 year veteran of the home security industry working in sales. She was a top sales person at leading home security companies, but has shifted her focus to working on helping consumers make the right decisions.