Access control is undergoing a transformation, and HavenLock is responding to increased demand for flexibility from end users and ease of installation from dealers.

HavenLock’s goal is to make dealers’ lives easier; and, in fact, CEO Alex Bertelli describes HavenLock as a labor savings product. “We’re really focused on making the dealer’s lives easier,” he said. “If you were to try to install a maglock, it’d probably take four to six hours. Our product is less than an hour — maybe even 30 minutes, depending on how good the tech is. That means your techs can go do more jobs. You don’t need as many at one job site.”

HavenLock is on Gen4 of its product, described as a next-generation access control system designed for normal daily operation, with a dedicated emergency mode that enables coordinated lockdown during active threat situations. The lock has incorporated features that combine safety equipment and an onboard RECS motion sensor that allows fail safe, or fail secure. It also has a backup battery on board, meaning it will automatically default in a power outage to the settings the end users and dealers choose. “That gives us the ability to do standalone installations,” Bertelli said. “It also allows us to go all the way up to enterprise.”

HavenLock was founded in 2014 when Bertelli returned from overseas after spending 10 years in the military. “I decided to get out and start my company and focus on preventing residential break-ins,” Bertelli said. “When I was overseas, a neighbor of mine had a break-in, and I wasn’t home. It really got me thinking about how we prevent [these types of crimes].”

At the time, the HavenLock team was small but mighty, and they set off on a mission to create a residential locking system. It took the team nearly four years to create the ‘secret sauce’ of HavenLock’s product.

To launch, the team went on Shark Tank in 2019. “It helped us close the venture capital round, and it brought a lot of notoriety to the company,” Bertelli said. Despite having a corporate job at the time, Bertelli decided to make the drive up to Chicago, stand in line with several thousand people and present the lock to the Sharks. “I was really passionate about solving this problem,” Bertelli said. “At the same time we were getting ready to go to Shark Tank, more and more school shootings started to happen. It was always on our roadmap to be a commercially-focused company, and we decided to excel.”

In 2020, the team started the undertaking of making a commercial version of its product and released Gen2, which Bertelli calls HavenLock’s commercial product. “That did very well for several years, but we did notice that although schools and universities and churches is a very altruistic mission, they typically have a longer sales cycle, and the decision-making process has to go through a lot of stage gates,” he said. “That market is really built for an established company to go sell on to. As a young brand, as a small business, we decided it would be better to go after the entire commercial market with our technology.”

Now on Gen4, HavenLock is looking to expand its commercial presence. “We see more opportunity in the commercial market from looking at industry reports that commercial is growing faster than residential,” Bertelli said. “But I really do like our residential product, and we do have plans to relaunch that in the next two years, given that we’re now making under our own brand. Our business model has changed from white labeling more to having HavenLock as the storefront brand and sell tradition like a manufacturer would.”

The company recently partnered with Alarm.com as a stepping stone to achieve this goal. Through this partnership, HavenLock’s Gen 4 platform is natively integrated into Alarm.com security ecosystem. This integration enables centralized control, mobile access, event logging and remote automation, enhancing security management across multiple facilities.

Bertelli’s long-term vision for the business is to be able to incorporate sensors and cameras into its locks, which HavenLock plans to release as add-ons in 2027. The team also wants to essentially replace magnetic locks, wherever they are. “It’s a physical locking system,” Bertelli said. “It’s meant to replace magnetic locks and electric strikes. It’s powered with a single power of our Ethernet cable, and it has the ability to upgrade over time.”

HavenLock also focused heavily on compliance when launching. The team certified its product with DHS and the Air Force, and, in addition to UL, put the product in front of NFPA Global Solutions. “We spent a lot of time on code compliance, but also education so dealers can come to our website and learn about our product through our dealer portal — everything from installation videos to marketing materials to quarterly and monthly webinars and white papers,” Bertelli added. “We really want to provide value to those dealers where, if you think about existing locks and strikes, it’s just the white instructions in the box. There’s nothing after that, and it’s because there’s been no innovation in that space for so long. You just get what you get. We want to change that.”

Ultimately, HavenLock’s goal is to make access control exciting to help dealers drive more revenue and take down barriers to providing this type of service to end users.

To learn more about HavenLock and its Gen4 lock, visit the company’s website.