Locksmith Trends of 2022

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The legend himself tagged us in this awesome post! So glad you received your prize for the SFIC Battle, and thanks for sending us this pic and thanks for participating; it was so fun!

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We got the legacy CLK supplies pinning mat, a couple of CLK gold followers, a mullet, a big bro, lab plastic Schlage follower, and Prolock key gauge. I like everything in there, Darrell. Great picture. Best combo there is. Thanks for sending that in.

"My 1st time ordering from @clksupplies ! I needed a couple of Chrysler ignition cylinders for a job and they hooked me up. They even sent me a pack of fruit snacks 🤣🤣 safe to say I’ll be ordering from them again 😋 #jds " - @JerseyDoorSmiths

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COMMENT OF THE WEEK

It's a real honor for us to do that. For the first couple of years, we didn't record it because I'm like we're doing this for them, but everyone here convinced me to record that. In hindsight, I'm really happy we were able to share it with everybody because this the truth, your support of our business here allows us to do that. I mean, we quit getting orders. Well, first of all, none of us would be here. And so I appreciate all of you for doing that.

LOCKSMITH TRENDS OF 2022

Recently, the Locksmith Ledger just came out with their yearly survey. It was somewhere in that 250-260 people off memory they surveyed, and I'm going to be going over some of the results. We’ll tackle the second half of it next week with the LockFather. If you want to see more in-depth, of course, all the credit goes to Locksmith Ledger for putting this out.

WHAT ARE 2022 LOCKSMITHS WORKING OUT OF?

50.7 % of locksmiths are mobile or home locksmith, 31.1 % are retail or shop/store locksmith, 11.5% are institutional, and 6.7 is other (something that doesn't fall in this category). The interesting or important part about studies is the information we're going to be talking about comes from this perspective of 50% of the responses come from people who work in a mobile or home locksmith type setup. Something cool about this is it's arguably one of the most popular ways to get into locksmithing today is just having a van, right? Not having a retail front. It’s an easy and good way to start. Of course, there are a lot of legacy shops that have stores like my dad's, the question we should talk about next week is, “If he had to start over today, would he still have as many stores as he has?” That'd be interesting to hear his perspective on. But for any of you who are looking at starting a locksmith business, and think that you need to have a storefront? Well, you don't. You can just start mobile. And the tough reality from 30 to 20 years ago to now is that competing retail storefront wise with big box stores is incredibly tough. So you have to make sure you niche down if you want to do that and profit. But yeah, mobile 50.7% makes a lot of sense to me.

WHAT TYPE OF SERVICES ARE LOCKSMITHS PERFORMING IN 2022?

87.6 % of the people in the survey are doing Masterkeying. Next up is commercial hardware installation, which makes sense because it's one of those if you're going to be doing master keying, you're also going to most likely have to do some hardware, repairs, and upgrades. 79.1 % of residential lock installation, upgrades, and repairs. 76 % are doing lockouts. Stand-alone access control 60.9 %, I find that number pretty high due to so many areas that require a special license to do that, which is historically kind of difficult to do unless they're like teaming up with a company that does do it. Maybe that's it. If you're one of those people who do it, if you want to reach out to me, I'd love to talk to you. Maybe have you on the show talk about what that looks like and how people can kind of get into that business. I know it's something that my dad several times has tried. He does do some of that work, but you have been interested and thought about that. 58.7 % do safe opening. The interesting part about the safe opening and safe-lock replacement is that these are very specialized skill. 49.8 % do transponder programming. At first glance, I thought it was kind of low, but maybe it kind of makes sense. Network access control with 33.3 %. Video surveillance at 24.4 %. That's essential categories and I would like to learn more from people who are doing that work. Love to have you on and kind of talk about it.

WHAT TYPE OF PRODUCTS ARE LOCKSMITHS SELLING IN 2022?

90.7 % for mechanical door hardware. Makes complete sense because that goes along with the job. For years, locksmiths were like the ones who would provide new hardware to new commercial buildings, which still kind of happens here and there, if you can get some good contacts, but so much of the hardware is retrofitting and existing. Electrified door hardware at 63.6 %. This is interesting to me, and even access control at 60.4 %. I guess access control you'd lumped in like your count steel locks or alarm locks, that sort of thing. So, I'm going to guess it kind of makes sense. It's cool though to see that many locksmiths were doing that for sure. Safes and safe locks 60.4 %. Retail impulse items (padlocks, keys, key hiders) 58.7 %. That's key blanks, like I would assume outside of institutional who are selling maybe you don't sell keys per se? Maybe you do. But I would kind of assume that to be 100%, so interesting. Automotive with 50.7 %. That makes sense about 50% of people do key programming. Video surveillance is 26.7 % and home automation is 18.7 %. With the home automation type of stuff, what's cool is whether it's a door lock or camera may be, a lot of locksmiths are been like installing just like the ring or whatever the other versions are of the ring. And the big thing is that like the people, of course, they can buy it anywhere but they want a professional. They want someone to install it and get it set up and truthfully, I think so much of the locksmithing lock and key business in the future is going to be concentrated on the expertise of the install of the actual work over like the parts.

WHAT PRODUCT CATEGORY ARE LOCKSMITHS WANTING TO ADD?

43% say none. That's interesting. The next biggest category is access control; makes complete sense. I think the specialized services are going to become more and more popular. Once again, if you do access control and want to kind of talk about it, and how that works for you and your business, definitely reach out. 8% for electrified door hardware. 8% home automation. If you haven't already, you might want to consider talking about on like a blog on your website, how you can install and help set up any sort of home automation, if some people want to. Of course, a lot of us, we can do it easily download the app, do all that other stuff. Sometimes, someone else don't want to get on the ladder. They don't want to do this; they want to do that. They just want to have somebody do it for them. So, what I find interesting is 43% say none. And at first glance, you’d be like why? But after thinking through it a little bit, if you're a one-person team or a few-person team, it can be hard to add more and more services, especially when you find the sweet spot. And to me, when I see 43 %, I don't think that they're not trying to grow their businesses per se. I think that they're actually like, “Hey, we've found some veins of gold that we can mine.” And they're working on doing that, so that was interesting.

I find this information interesting. Of course, you can check it out on the Locksmith Ledger, but it gives us some good insights gives me some good insights. For part two, we're going to talk about the revenue and the money. That should be fun. See you next time!