LOCKLY looks to stand out in a crowded smart lock market
In what would once have been a relatively easy task, standing apart in today’s smart lock market with all the options that are available has become increasingly difficult. It seems there are now as many features, designs and finishes available for connected locks as there are good, old-fashioned keyed deadbolts and doorknobs.
However, with each passing year, the innovations that companies bring to the table never cease to amaze as evidenced by the solutions on display at this year’s all-virtual CES event. Among the usual crowd of smart lock manufacturers was LOCKLY, a company that began as an OEM provider of locks to some other industry brands and has subsequently built its own line of branded products over the last five years.
One of the company’s lock, dubbed LOCKLY Vision, incorporates a camera into the lock itself that doubles as a video doorbell in addition to a touchscreen and fingerprint reader. Earlier this week during the virtual Pepcom event that took place in conjunction with CES, the company announced that it is adding two new products, LOCKLY Duo and LOCKLY Guard, to its portfolio.
The Duo essentially combines a smart latch and deadbolt into a single device. When a user enters a building and lifts the latch handle upwards, the device’s “Dual-Locking Technology” simultaneously secures both the latch and deadbolt in a single motion. The Duo also features a touchscreen keypad along with a fingerprint reader on the side similar to the Vision. The LOCKLY Guard is designed to fit on existing and new sliding and swing-style doors and features an optional RFID reader.
According to Jeff Pouliot, LOCKLY’s Head of Sales, one of the things that really differentiates LOCKLY from other manufacturers is their patented PIN Genie technology, which randomizes the number sequences on its touchscreen keypad to help prevent codes from being guessed or watched by someone from behind.
“With other traditional smart locks, they have what I call the static ‘1-9’ (configuration) and if you go to somebody’s house you can typically see the smudge or ‘Cheetos dust’ and kind of see where their fingerprints have been,” Pouliot explains. “With our PIN Genie keypad, we have four circles with three numbers in those circles and every time you enter your code the numbers change.”
Although LOCKLY has initially rolled out its products at retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s, Pouliot says one of their goals in 2021 and beyond is to make a bigger push into the professional channel and have security integrators begin to install their locks in both the residential and commercial markets. In fact, Pouliot says the company has already been in discussions with security distributors to get their products on the shelves.
“Last year, if you put a banner over LOCKLY, we were focused on retail. If you look at 2021, we’re still going to support retail but our solutions that we’ve announced at CES do lean more toward commercial and pro (installers),” Pouliot says. “Duo is probably 80% positioned as a commercial, professional installation (solution) and Guard is 100% commercial and pro. You need to have an installer because of the different make ups on sliding and swing doors, you need to have a professional installer to make sure that solution is setup correctly.”
To learn more about LOCKLY and their suite of products, visit their website here.
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
