`Spy' Shops Tap Into Public's Fear Of Crime -- Stun Guns, Night Goggles Carried By Seattle Outlets

Fear sells.

It has helped the firearms industry, and now it's helping support three stores in Seattle that cater to your personal safety.

How about a nice bullet-proof vest? Something in a tan chamois, perhaps?

How about a stun gun? Spending $89.95 will get you one of the electric-shock devices guaranteed to disable an attacker from 10 feet away.

And if you live in an apartment, $52.95 will buy a gadget that hangs on a doorknob and warns you if someone tries to force open the door.

These devices are part of a developing personal-safety industry so new it doesn't yet have a name, although the stores usually are found under "security" in the Yellow Pages, along with burglar-alarm companies.

But the new businesses aren't alarm companies; they appear to fall somewhere between traditional security companies and gun shops.

"The whole idea behind our stores is defense, not offense," says Cheryl Hayes, a manager for The Spy Factory in San Antonio, Texas, which has 18 outlets around the country, including one in Seattle. "We try to keep people out in the first place."

Seattle's first such store was Fox's Spy Outlet on Greenwood Avenue North, opened in November 1991 by Ken Fox.

Fox got the idea by working at a Spy Factory outlet in Sacramento.

The Spy Factory itself was started in 1989 in San Antonio by Ronald Kimball, a former federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent who worked in Ecuador and Costa Rica before going into business, said Hayes.

`Offshoot of another business'

"It's really an offshoot of another business," she said.

"My boss owned a bullet-proof car company in San Antonio and people started asking him about other things. We started to see a potential market there."

The Spy Factory opened a Seattle store in the Newmark Center at Second Avenue and Pike Street in May.

Then about three months ago, the area's biggest and newest store opened at 1811 Eastlake Avenue.

Called the SPY-PI Connection, it's owned by William Ruddell.

Like others in this business, Ruddell says he opened the retail outlet because he'd been in the security business and noticed what seemed like a possible new market.

Ruddell's parent company, Ruddell International, which specializes in electronic surveillance, has been in business more than 10 years. This is the first time he has offered surveillance gear and other merchandise for retail sale.

Ruddell, who was raised in Port Angeles, has been a marshal in Yelm, Thurston County, and a consultant to the Mexico City police chief.

Stores such as his display products such as hats that say "FBI" or military camouflage-style night-vision goggles.

Public discovery

But along with police-wannabe paraphernalia, there's a different line of products the public is just beginning to discover, Ruddell says.

Apartment-security products, for example.

Tenants don't always enjoy the security advantages available to homeowners. Landlords don't usually install permanent security systems, and tenants aren't apt to pay for such things themselves, when they might move in a few months.

That led to the marketing of the alarm that hangs on a doorknob and sounds a shriek if someone nudges it, Ruddell said.

Many personal-defense items are offered, including hand-held pepper sprays at $14.95 and stun guns for $89.95.

There are more high-tech devices, too, including night-vision goggles, which carry a price tag of $4,500.

The question is who buys such stuff, and Ruddell acknowledges there's no way of knowing. He notes, though, that all the items are legal to sell.

Long-range surveillance microphones and dozens of types of electronic "bugs" can be sold, but a sign on the wall warns that under state law, it's illegal to record someone without their permission.

Some of the items have shown up in criminal trials.

A Bellevue man convicted in September of conspiring to distribute methamphetamines testified at his trial that he'd bought a set of the night-vision goggles at a "spy shop" because he liked such gimmicks; he also had four handguns in holsters when he was arrested by Seattle police.

But there are many more customers like Flip Piper, who stopped at SPY-PI to buy a stun gun for his fiancee because he was concerned about her safety but didn't want to buy a handgun.

"I started thinking about getting something less likely to be taken away," said Piper. "This will not kill."

All the stores here are small and privately owned, so the extent of the market isn't well-defined.

Fox started his business with $25,000 and operates from a storefront. The Spy Factory is essentially one room in the Newmark, and the San Antonio headquarters will only say its national sales amount to several million dollars.

Ruddell says his companies do business in the six-figure range but declined to be specific.

Business flourishes

Nationally, the home-security business amounts to more than $2 billion a year, according to security-industry analysts, and it's estimated only about 8 percent of homes have burglar alarms.

The section of the security market devoted to personal safety is much smaller and remains highly fragmented.

Ruddell says the personal-safety market is one that didn't even exist until a few years ago.

"When I was a kid growing up in Port Angeles, none of us even had keys to the house because the door was never locked," he says.

"Now people lock themselves in. They put bars on their own windows."