ShopperTrak Sold To Tyco Security Firm

It is rare for a company so heavily involved in retail to also devote resources to something as seemingly non-sequitur as fire protection, but Tyco has managed to create a profitable business doing just that. With a recent acquisition, the company’s skills might become even more flexible and diverse.

Tyco, the security systems company, announced Tuesday (Dec. 22) that it had acquired ShopperTrak in a deal totaling $175 million in cash. Girish Rishi, executive vice president of North America integrated solutions and services at Tyco, explained that alongside another acquisition of Footfall, a retail traffic monitoring firm, the move will help his company stay current with its retail clients in a rapidly evolving omnichannel marketplace.

“Tyco is working with the world’s leading retailers to meet their omnichannel needs and respond to changing consumer behavior,” Rishi said in a statement. “The ShopperTrak acquisition will enable us to help retailers effectively improve the shopper’s experience, thus enhancing their revenues and profitability. The ShopperTrak and Footfall acquisitions will build on our well-established inventory visibility and loss prevention solutions for retailers. This is core to Tyco’s strategy to leverage our Internet of Things capabilities, capturing and analyzing data to provide actionable insights to help solve customer problems and support them in achieving their broader mission.”

Chicago Tribune reported on Tyco’s big plans now that it has bolstered its roster of retail subsidiaries. The company estimates that it will be able to capture, compile and analyze data from 35 billion shopping activities annually, and despite onboarding two separate companies, it expects the acquisitions to both be profitable one year after the deal is finalized, sometime in Q2 2016.

The mere addition of ShopperTrak’s approximate $75 million in annual revenue should provide an immediate boost to Tyco’s retail business, but its analytical prowess with merchants should keep that momentum going well into the future.