Carlow-based Netwatch has successfully launched an innovative security system permitting the monitoring of premises throughout Europe and as far away as Arizona.
There are now a number of premises in Arizona where would-be burglars will find themselves being stopped in their tracks by a warning issued by security personnel located at a monitoring centre based in Carlow.
This highly unusual situation has come about because Carlow-based company Netwatch has identified a gap in the market for an innovative security system which involves the monitoring of live video footage of a premises by staff who are able to warn off intruders and alert the police if they don’t heed the warning. The Netwatch system is now being used to monitor 620 sites which are mostly car dealerships, construction sites, warehouses and factories. The Company has been selling in the US since 2006 and has now installed the system in 80 sites in Arizona.
While CCTV is now widely used as a security measure, Netwatch has taken it a step further by being the first to develop a system which allows monitoring staff to issue a warning to intruders.
“Since the company was set up in 2003, there have been 6,000 instances of staff making audio contact with intruders who fled the scene and the Gardai have arrested 200 people with information provided by the Netwatch command centre”, reveals company managing director and co-founder David Walsh who has recently been shortlisted for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards.
Now employing a full time staff of 60, Netwatch expects to achieve a turnover of €7.5 million this year and plans to double this by 2009 mostly through expanding sales in the US.
The setting up of the company was prompted by an incident in which a friend of Mr. Walsh’s responded to an alarm call and was attacked by three intruders. Mr. Walsh and another friend, Niall Kelly, an electronics engineer, who is now Netwatch’s technical director, decided that there had to be a better way to keep a premises secure and they set out to find it. Travelling to Australia they found a company which provided security for military installations and had the technology they needed.
The new system developed for Netwatch could detect an intruder and warn them off. “We knew we had a unique solution which was far better than the traditional alarm and CCTV systems and more cost effective than employing full-time security guards”, says Mr. Walsh.
He and Mr. Kelly set up the company in Carlow in early 2003 with a staff of 3. They invested €300,000 in the venture and secured some employment assistance from Carlow Enterprise Board. “When we set up the company everyone told us it wouldn’t work”, says Mr. Walsh, who along with Mr. Kelly worked day and night to ensure that it did. Neither director took a salary for 18 months and both spent Christmas Day 2003 in the Netwatch Command Centre watching their clients’ premises.
Within the first six months they had over 50 customers and the business began to take off. The initial focus was on providing security for commercial operations but customers who used the system in their businesses began asking Netwatch to provide security for private homes. The company now monitors sites in France and Spain – mostly in holiday homes owned by Irish people. Netwatch also has customers in Britain which accounts for 10% of turnover.
Sales in Arizona came about due to the twinning of Carlow Town and Tempe in Arizona. Mr. Walsh visited Tempe as part of a trade delegation in 2006 and has now installed the Netwatch systems at a number of construction sites and warehouses there.
The US market, which now accounts for 20% of turnover, offers huge possibilities but Mr. Walsh says that the aim at present is to work out the best model for using the system there. He is looking at the possibility of franchising the installation of the systems in the US but says that monitoring will continue to be done from Ireland. He says the reason for this is because the quality of service provided by the personnel at the monitoring centre is one of the keys to the company’s success.
In 2004 Netwatch invested €2 million in a state of the art command centre which has the capacity to monitor 3,000 sites, so the company has scope to expand sales.
Mr. Walsh is confident that Netwatch can achieve its targets. “The main selling point is that it can save businesses thousands of euros each year and that is a highly effective, accountable solution. It eliminates false alarms and it deters intruders”.