Electric Guard Dog Wins SDM's 2016 Dealer of the Year
Electric Guard Dog’s unique RMR-generating electrified fence model has propelled the company to annual double-digit growth, resulting in both an acquisition by Snow Phipps last June and of its sole local direct competitor in July — just two of many reasons it earned SDM’s 2016 Dealer of the Year Award.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. Columbia, S.C.-based Electric Guard Dog (EGD) started existence as an actual guard dog service. When Bill Mullis founded the company in 1973, he never expected that it would end up as an electric fence service provider; but almost 20 years later EGD was reborn in its current form after a series of break-ins at his facility led the inventive Mullis to come up with his own solution, which very quickly became more popular than the live dogs.
To combat his problems with crime, Mullis designed, built, and tested the company’s patented flagship product: the first solar-powered electric security fence, featuring 7,000 volts of pulsed electricity to deter would-be thieves from trying to climb or cut the fence. “Bill had built his guard dog business into the largest of its kind on the East Coast,” says Jack DeMao, CEO. “It was an RMR business from the beginning, which was unusual.” In 1991 they were broken into twice at their own headquarters and it was clear to him that property crime wasn’t a priority for law enforcement because they were focused on life safety issues. So he developed the electric fence to deter criminals and the rest was history. (For more on this history, see SDM’s exclusive interview with Bill Mullis on page 68.)