MANSFIELD – A state-of-the-art card reader does not offer much protection if the door it is attached to will not stay shut.
Brian Schmidt, owner of Schmidt Total Protection, sees that kind of problem more often than people might expect. A business may be ready to upgrade its electronic access system, only for Schmidt’s team to find an aging door, worn hardware or a closer mechanism that no longer works properly.
“You have an old door with old hardware and an old door closer — well, guess what? The door doesn’t close,” Schmidt said. “It’s silly to put in the electronic access if the door doesn’t work.”
So Schmidt’s team can replace the door, install the hardware and add the electronic access system rather than sending the customer to multiple companies to solve what is ultimately one problem.
It is a simple example of a much bigger idea behind a new name for the 50-year-old Mansfield company.
Schmidt Security Pro and Schmidt Fire are now Schmidt Total Protection, bringing the company’s services under one brand and reflecting a reality Schmidt has watched develop for years: security is not really one thing anymore.
Protection is becoming more connected
For decades, cameras, burglar alarms, fire systems and building access could largely exist in separate worlds. Increasingly, customers do not want them to.
“They want their video cameras and their access control and everything to talk to each other and integrate with each other,” Schmidt said.
In the security industry, that kind of unified view is often described as a “single pane of glass” — one place where customers can see and manage systems that once required separate platforms and logins.
For a facility manager, that might mean seeing video associated with someone opening an access-controlled door instead of checking one system for the access record and another for the camera footage.
Just as importantly, Schmidt noted that customers increasingly want fewer companies to call when something goes wrong.
“I think it’s even as much as the systems, it’s the service provider,” he said. “I don’t have to call this company for my fire services and this company for my security services. I can call Schmidt and have total protection.”
That broader definition applies to homes, too. Beyond traditional burglary and fire protection, modern systems can include carbon monoxide monitoring, water-leak detection, smart-home controls and video analytics capable of separating activity homeowners care about from activity they do not.
Schmidt offered a simple example: a camera can recognize the difference between a vehicle pulling into a driveway and a squirrel running across it.
“I don’t care about the squirrel,” he said, “but I care about the car that pulls up or the person that’s walking in my driveway at 2 o’clock in the morning.”
That is one reason Schmidt said security has become as much about property awareness as preparing for a crime. A homeowner may want to know when a delivery arrives. A business owner with several locations may want to see what is happening without driving from property to property. Someone may need to remotely let a person into part of a building and lock it again afterward.
The technology is not only there for the moment something goes wrong. It is proactive so customers can have confidence and peace of mind wherever they are.
Marketing and Sales Director Christen Dingess said some of Schmidt’s longtime customers demonstrate that broader idea of protection best.
“They started out with a home security system. They’re business owners who brought Schmidt into their business, and then they had an aging parent and went down that path,” Dingess said.
For Dingess, that progression is part of what the new brand is meant to communicate. A customer may first know Schmidt for one need, only to discover later that the company can help protect other parts of their life or business as those needs change.
“When we say total protection, we are offering more solutions and a larger footprint than a lot of other security companies,” Dingess said.
The new name is meant to make that breadth easier to understand.
‘Leading edge, not bleeding edge’
Schmidt wants the company to keep pace with rapid advances in cameras, automation, artificial intelligence and connected systems.
Just not at any cost.
“We want to be on the leading edge,” Schmidt said. “We don’t necessarily want to be on the bleeding edge. That can lead to a lot of pain for everybody.”
New technology arrives constantly in the security industry, but newer does not automatically mean better. Schmidt said the company considers what customers are actually asking for, works with trusted manufacturers and tests equipment before putting it into a customer’s environment.
The company’s new experience center in Mansfield gives technicians a dedicated place to train on equipment and gives customers a chance to see systems working before they are installed.
“It’s a place for them to come in and see it and touch it and experience the software and see it in action before it actually gets deployed at their site,” Schmidt said.
On a large screen, customers can watch a camera system interact with access control, see what happens when someone enters through a particular door and understand how information from multiple systems can work together.
In other words, they can see what “total protection” actually means before being asked to depend on it.
Keeping the Schmidt name
For Schmidt, a second-generation owner, changing the company’s identity did not mean abandoning its history.
“It was important to me to carry on the Schmidt name in the rebrand,” he said. “I just feel like it has served us very well for 50 years, and I think it really has a good reputation in the community and the industry.”
The challenge is preserving what earned that reputation while accepting that nearly everything surrounding it will keep changing.
Schmidt’s six core values are enthusiasm, professionalism, respect, accountability, innovation and honesty. Schmidt said those principles shape how employees work with one another, customers and the company’s partners.
“Those core values really are a big part of what got us here,” he said.
Change, after all, has never really been optional. The company has already moved from security guards to electronic systems, from standalone cameras to connected technology and from traditional alarms to a much broader idea of what protection can mean.
The equipment will change. The risks will change. Even the definition of security will continue to change.
But Schmidt’s commitment to the principles that built the company will stay the same.
Schmidt is changing its name to leave room for all of it — while holding firmly to the foundation that carried it through its first 50 years.
