September 2, 2010
Kevin Lynch, Executive Director of Business Development, ADT Retail

Graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978 and spending 6 years serving his country Kevin learned the importance of two critical values that have served him well over his 30+ year career. These values of partnership and creditability have been his trade mark with every retail partner he's worked with to this day.

Coming out of the Navy Kevin spent a short time with a small retailer in the north east called Narragansett Clothing Co. as the Director of Store Operations before being heavily recruited over to Sensormatic Electronics where he spent 13 years building his strong national reputation. He then spent 4 years with The Network and played an instrumental role in helping them develop their national brand while gaining invaluable experience in the training and communications field. Armed with his national reputation and his national program development experience ADT then recruited Kevin as their Director of Business Development to help lead their effort to increase the quality, the services, and the partnerships in the retail industry, which now as the Executive Director he's still doing to this day.

Over the years Kevin has helped lead a number of significant industry changing projects with Radio Frequency Identification Technology and Source Tagging Technology programs that revolutionized the EAS industry. With his unique broad experience and his deep commitment to adding value to his retail partners Kevin has become an integral part of the retail Loss Prevention community. As evidenced by his being on the Retail Industry Leaders Association Steering Committee for Loss Prevention, the Board of Directors for the Loss Prevention Foundation, the Vendor Council for the Loss Prevention Magazine, and as a member of the Loss Prevention Research Council.

His accomplishments, industry involvement and leadership position has allowed him to develop a unique prospective of the industry that's grounded in his two core values of partnership and creditability. It's Kevin's experience that the most successful LP senior executives share common traits. The first being that they are as concerned about sales and earnings as they are about shrinkage and their emphasis is on adding value to the organization with everything they do and every decision they make. They understand and appreciate the value a solution provider can add, and strategically include them early on in the processes as a team member challenging them to provide the answers for today's needs and working with them on tomorrow's solutions.

Kevin believes that the industry itself has made great strides in providing more educational opportunities for it's young members than ever before. With the Loss Prevention Foundation, RILA, NRF, FMI, the CFI, and the IOBSE, to name just a few. He also suggest the benefits of expanding the stereo typical industry mentorship definitions for Loss Prevention executives to include having a vendor mentor as well. Which is a true value added-partnership driven suggestion that could make a great impact.

His vision of tomorrow's path is obviously impacted by the continued evolution of the industry's technology and increasing need for integrated solutions that at the core will change the profile of tomorrow's LP executive. Kevin see's the LP team of tomorrow as needing to be comprised of executives with IT, Finance, and Legal experience. From the vendor prospective he see's the need for solution providers to be able to offer an international presence and provide "Continuity of Care", a one point of contact that ensures quality of delivery, international pricing, and one stop shopping. Over the next 24 months he sees continued consolidation both in the retail and vendor industries.

Kevin has been heavily involved in this industries growth and change over the last 30 years and the retailers expectations of a strategic partner today, requiring real time information - dashboard tools - and vision of where product lines are going, has evolved considerably since he started his career and if history is any indicator of future performance we're confident in predicting that Kevin will continue to help lead this industry well into the future.

Job well done Kevin! Thanks for helping lead the way. You can contact Kevin at kelynch@adt.com or call him at 401-338-1348

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