While REMO Security Doors has only been around for two and a half years, it’s already making headlines — just last week, the company was covered by FOX News, The New York Post and more for installing metal bullet-resistant security doors in a Jewish all-girls school in Brooklyn in the wake of so many mass shootings. And that’s just the first of more than 50 Jewish schools and synagogues in Brooklyn where REMO has door installation jobs lined up.
“We are expanding pretty much every week, even every day,” said Omer Barnes, the founder and CEO of REMO. “I think our biggest potential right now is with school doors.”
Barnes, who was born and raised in Israel, says he founded REMO as a means to bring safety concepts that are so common in his home country to the U.S.
“Every entry door is a high security door [in Israel],” Barnes said. “And we take the design of the door to the next level so you don’t have to compromise and decide whether you want a nice door or a secure door.”
In talking to school districts about potential installations, Barnes really stresses the concept of the ‘safe room’ that Israel has implemented.
“The safe room is a mandatory thing in Israel since 1992 where every building, whether you live in a one bedroom apartment or a mansion, has a 50 or 70 square foot safe room,” Barnes said. “So we’ve been talking to all of the school districts about creating these safe spaces for students and educators to hide during a threat.”
REMO specializes in four different types of doors: decorative, school, fire and blast/ballistic/forced entry. All of the doors are made in Israel, where the research and development team is constantly coming up with new ideas and further developing the company’s products. The products also go through intense testing in the Israel location, which you can watch here.
“It’s amazing, the technology that we have,” Barnes said. “Sometimes you look at it as a simple door, but changing the way you install it or changing the locking mechanism can change everything. There really is a lot of testing and development going into it.”
While the products are manufactured and developed in Israel, the company’s customer base is in the U.S., where REMO has 25 employees, and storefronts in New York and New Jersey (with an L.A. location on the way).
Barnes said growth has been steady, and that the company is starting to look for acquisition opportunities.
“The plan for the coming year is to multiply sales of our fire doors and school doors, and we are just coming out now with our decorative doors, so we’re pushing that,” Barnes said. “But the way I see it, I think the schools will take over everything at the moment.”
