Company opens new location, creates jobs in Rexburg
On Wednesday, a Rexburg business cut the ribbon on a new, expanded location. It included several new employees, with the promise of more to come.
AvantGuard Monitoring Company is a third party, wholesale company that accepts phone calls on behalf of security companies.
“I can think of several instances where I know that I have saved someone’s life. Family members or the person themselves have called back a few days later thanking me in particular and I am not the only one this has happened to,” said Aaron McGregor, a lead operator for AvantGuard.
“We have over 200,000 subscribers from Alaska to Puerto Rico. Those subscribers include residents, businesses, schools, hospitals…” said Josh Garner, CEO of AvantGuard.
The Utah-based company opened in east Idaho in the fall of 2012. They spent their first year in an office over city hall.
“We chose Rexburg because it is a highly educated workforce with the university, a lot of talent, it is a rural community and the city really rolled out the red carpet for us,” said Garner.
The company wanted to test the waters with the location and their staff of mostly BYU- Idaho students. Summer and holiday breaks were a concern for the 24/7 operation.
“We still need labor, we still need team members to be here. we had to work through some of those issues. We actually wanted to get through one holiday season before we made it a permanent commitment to build a building,” said Garner.
AvantGuard planned to give itself 18 months to be in its own location. Fifteen months later, it’s a reality.
“It’s 10,000 square feet. We have not occupied all of it at this time,” said Garner.
AvantGuard owns their new space. It was critical to the company that everything be redundant. That means two generators, extra phone lines, internet connections, and the central system is the exact same as the one in the Utah location.
“Part of our strategy is to be able to provide continuous ‘up’ time and service for the people who depend on us for their safety and protection,” said Garner.
McGregor has been with AvantGuard since they opened in Idaho and he is thrilled to be in the new building.
“I feel like we are at home now, before it felt like we were camping out somewhere. It’s was just kind of temporary. Now we are at home; this is where we will be; this is our job. We are ready to work,” said McGregor.
