ASSA ABLOY, the world leader in entryway access and locking solutions, has now officially closed on its deal to acquire August Home, Inc. That’s according to announcements made by both companies as of December 5. Unfortunately, the financial details of the acquisition itself have not been made public, as of this writing. However, both ASSA ABLOY and August Home have indicated that the two companies will continue to operate independently, although August Home will act as a subsidiary of the Americas division of ASSA ABLOY. August Home will also continue to maintain its headquarters in San Francisco.
That arrangement does make some sense because August Home is already fairly well-established in its particular market as a manufacturer of high-tech locking solutions. The terms of the acquisition effectively allow August Home to take advantage of ASSA ABLOY’s huge presence in the market, as both a distributor, manufacturing partner, and marketer. At the same time, by acquiring the former company, ASSA ABLOY has also joined forces with what might otherwise be a strong competitor in that market. Moreover, its extension into the market encompassed by August Home’s solutions – which include video-enabled doorbells, connected smart locks, and other similarly marketed systems – is likely to prove useful, as consumers continue to drive a shift toward technology-based solutions for everyday problems. ASSA ABLOY, meanwhile, indicates that the initial goal of the two companies will be to incorporate its Yale locks into August Home’s August Access platform – which is a cloud-based platform enabling access for delivery service providers and others, while still providing a consumer with secure control over that access. August Home expects that to be completed by early 2018.
Looking beyond the immediate future, ASSA ABLOY says that there is plenty of room for growth at the international scale for August Home. That is in terms of both retail sales and professional installation opportunities for its products. Among those, the two companies have specifically said that they will be exploring further openings in the secure delivery sector, as well as multi-family access solutions. That also includes the unique opportunities represented by the burgeoning vacation rental market or any other markets where security enhanced by connected devices might prove useful to buyers.