When I hear the acronym “IP,” it’s easy for my mind to drift to the famous computer nerds of Silicon Valley from the 70’s. It’s a technology that can seem intimidating, scary, complex… well… all of the above. Sure, there are pieces of the tech that make it complex, but we don’t have to be experts in IP to understand how to install and manage an IP based Surveillance System.
At the first of the year we’ll be launching a 4 episode training series: IP Technology, The Basics. It will be the first of many trainings that we’ll deploy this year using the Arm Yourself Podcast.
THIS TRAINING WILL BE FREE TO STREAM/WATCH ON YOUR OWN TIME.
SimpliSafe, Ring, and all of the DIY systems are severely lacking [to say the least] when it comes to REAL and complete solutions for security, automation, and surveillance. Sure, they integrate relatively seamlessly with the ever growing Amazon-supporting brands, but they fall short in so many ways. That said, the offering can actually do damage to an industry with over a century in history and development.
The two challenges we’re addressing relate to the Fire Alarm industry, and the Commercial Burg industries. In this episode we’ll talk a little about how other manufacturers have struggled getting products to us. We’ll also talk about price increases from some of the more prominent manufacturers in our industry.
Things have become tricky with all of the price increases and manufacturing anomalies that seem to have plagued the Honeywell fire lines (Silent Knight, System Sensor, and Fire Lite). Our own price lists saw almost 30% increases accross the board for all Honeywell-fire parts! This is incredible!
We don’t mean to brag, but the great news is, we have better answers to solve this conundrum than almost all other distributors.
We know, we know. We talk a lot about our online purchasing platform, ORBIT. Version 3 is the largest and most significant release of ORBIT so far. We’ve put a lot of thought and work in to version 3. Our primary goal is to make ORBIT the “iTunes of distribution.”
With all of the manufacturers we purchase from, and with all of the products in our database (over 97,000), how can you ever find what your looking for?
We’ve created KITs, or examples of systems on ORBIT that give you an easy answer to the simple question: how do I find Cat5?
Our KITs are typical systems that you can browse (by pressing the more info button from any kit index page). Once you’ve landed on the kit information page, you can add ANY items from those kits directly to your cart. Even better, you can add an entire kit to your cart to get a discount on all the parts in the kit! If the kit fills your needs, get a discount on that order. To take it even another step further, you can increase the quantities of those kits from your cart page! In other words, you can increase the kit quantites (with discounted price) from your cart for big savings.
With version 3, we added these awesome features (and many more not included in this list):
Saved Carts (accessible from the “My Accounts > Pending Carts” menu option).
Customer Kits. When you build your own kit (add items to your cart, and then choose “Build My Kit”), we get an email and have the ability to give that Kit a discount! You automatically get an email telling you, you received a discount. We’re pretty “liberal” with customer – kit discounts, just sayin’.
Branch pages. You’ll be able to see promos that are running at your branch! This page is the “My Arlenco” page.
Order History. Browse your previous orders, and order from those orders!
Arm Yourself Promos. Look for the Arm Yourself badge (under the On Sale option). These are limited time, special offers on Arm Yourself brands. What is an Arm Yourself brand? Simply put: brands that are easy to get, the highest quality, and brands whose sales-reps are the easiest to work with (for events, trainings, etc.). Brands that we love.
Order from ANYpage. Previous orders, kit pages, promo pages, all have product lists. Just scroll down and look for the add to cart button!
Purchase WITH credit card. Shop, purchase, and get shipping updates, right from within ORBIT! If you can’t make it in to the store, it’s VERY easy to “complete a purchase” on ORBIT 3.0.
See below for some screen-shots!
Don’t wait to register with ORBIT if you don’t already have an account. Register by clicking on the “Register” option at the top of the page.
Digital Video has completely changed within the last 25 years. In today’s episode Cameron discusses the nature of video surveillance, the primary differences between old video storage solutions, and today’s video storage solutions. HOW, for example, does UNV specify 1000 foot runs between video sources on an IP Video installation?
We’ve been away for a while, but trust us, it’ll be worth it! We’ve been busy developing ORBIT v.4. You may have noticed that we added some features to the site, but most of what we’ve been up to lives under the hood.
If you hadn’t noticed, we just launched Orbit v.4 .
There are too many feature built in to this powerful purchasing tool to highlight here, so we’ll just hit the high points. Our Favorite? Shopping for individual items by browsing ORBIT Kits. *Pricing shown in images doesn’t reflect actual pricing.
*With 97,000 [ish] products in our database, we think you’ll enjoy shopping right from our kits.
We had the privilege of having Jeff and Dallan come to our store to talk about the genesis of PDK, pdkio, and PDK’s sales philosophy when it comes to integration and it’s customers.
In this episode you meet the men behind the product. We learned that PDK care very much for it’s dealer base (installers, end-users, and distribution). We discuss the power and expand-ability of the product.