STRUGGLING to keep pace with growth is a problem many businesses would dream of having.
It’s a problem Bradley Kyne may not have anticipated when he founded his security services company, EK Security, in 2016.
Mr Kyne started the business to address crime rates in rural Australia, which he observed as typically higher than those of metropolitan areas.
His goal was to increase the standard of safety services in rural areas such as the East Kimberley, where EK Services is based.
That dearth of services provided a lucrative business opportunity, and Mr Kyne realised that most security incidents required a cleaning service in tandem.
He said there was huge demand for both services – security and cleaning – a self-sustaining model he claimed enabled the (then) separate business units to excel.
As the companies grew, it soon became apparent that the cleaning and security business needed cohesive branding.
This year’s RISE Regional Business Award winner, EK Services was lunched in 2019 as the parent company for EK Cleaning and the newly rebranded Northern Protective Services.
An overheads department grew to a full corporate services suite and eventually EK Services’ third arm, BGR Properties, was created in 2020.
Mr Kyne said the system soon became part of its vertical integration strategy and BGR would rent houses to NPS, hire EK Cleaning to maintain them and then hire NPS to control them.
The NPS tech department is one of the newest additions to the business, which provides CCTV and alarms to clients for NPS to monitor.
But the company has not been without its fair share of challenges, which Mr Kyne said came in the form of EK’s rate of growth, which taught him his business couldn’t service everyone.
EK has since ventured into hospitality, acquiring two Kununurra cafes in August this year, which Mr Kyne said had helped generate further cash flow for the business.
