Editorial

Some of the installations carried out by our readers are so impressive, so complex, so ground-breaking and destined for greatness that you can imagine the MD bounding up on stage to take an installer 'Oscar ' (by that I am, of course, referring to our Security Excellence Awards ... fewer tears, more wires). Here at Security Installer we get to hear about most of these high profile installations and a lot of them are featured in On the Case (see page 49). At the other end of the scale we have the installer's daily toil, destined never to be mentioned ... domestic/small commercial installation (no awards, lots of tea).

This shrinking violet of security has been in the shadows for years. In a country where we have more CCTV cameras per head of population than any other, we still have only 12-15 per cent penetration of intruder alarms into the domestic market (I'm not 100 per cent certain of this statistic, but presumably someone must have counted them, and in an industry which is rated to be worth between about £3 – 4billion ... what's a billion between friends? ... I'm on pretty safe ground ).

Despite various initiatives over the years to increase the penetration of domestic alarms (such as the offensive by the nationals to open up the market, national newspaper advertising, the in-depth BSIA study a couple of years ago) the nut has not been truly cracked. But will there ever be a time when domestic alarm systems will be the norm rather than the exception? Many people in the industry are feeling that the time for a domestic upsurge is coming ... and it's more to do with the technology than with some brilliant new sales techniques or incentives.

Home monitoring products are now coming on to the market that make domestic security seem more attractive, less of a grudge purpose, with text messages going to user's mobiles or the ability to log on remotely. This new equipment is outside the current structure of bells-only or monitored alarms and is forcing some installers to re-think domestic installation. It's no good saying the systems are largely unproven or can't provide as good a service as a traditional alarm. Installers should offer users what they are willing to pay for if they want a bigger bite out of this still untapped sector.

It doesn't mean you can't also be providing top class traditional, and more expensive, systems (Beethoven also wrote radio jingles ... or so I'm told). On the subject of domestic alarms, our Mike Lynskey has some words of advice for cracking open your market locally (see page 15) and there is an opportunity to get into the related home automation sector and possibly become trained in this interesting area (see page 37). Who knows, a few years down the line you may be getting calls from your customers complaining that their 'ambient mood setting' has been making them irritable or the auto microwave has cooked the cat.