FROM blowing up cars to throwing Molotov cocktails and firing shotguns, ACE/Security Laminates™ CEO Peter Fabian has done everything to market his products.

The head of the security measures firm has made a name for ACE with road show-style demos of the thin plastic film he says renders glass resistant to violent blasts or bullets.

"Our product is transparent, you can't see it," says Fabian, explaining his company's explosive tactics. Lab test results serve their purpose, he said, but test documents can be hard to interpret for civil servants and private sector purchasers.

Violent demonstrations, he said, work.

"Seeing is believing," said Fabian, who in the past has literally stood behind his product to prove it can stop bullets.

"I used to stand behind the glass," he says. "But now that I'm making money, I've got too much to live for." ACE laminates make glass resistant, not impervious to bullets and explosions. Fabian says the mainpoint of installing the film is to keep windows from shattering and showering a building's occupants with a hail of knife-like shards.

Car bomb detonation
Tomorrow the 11-year-old firm will try to impress a large potential U.S. client with a car bomb detonation, but Fabian says the car is small potatoes compared to some ACE demos.

"We've detonated 2,500-lb. bombs. A 2,500-lb. bomb leaves a crater the size of a football field."

Fabian says an upcoming demonstration at a military base in Alberta will utilize a 5,000-lb. bomb to simulate an explosion similar in scale to the Oklahoma City bombing, showing how the company's security film withstands the blast.

It's a far cry from the company's early days when smash-and-grab protection was the target market and the company would let reporters and buyers throw rocks at glass treated with the film. But the world—and his product—have moved on.

We started out with the equivalent of a Commodore 64 and now we've got a Pentium IV.
sean.mckibbon@ott.sunpub.com

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