It’s a regrettable fact that around 50% of all newly trained independent locksmiths will failed to succeed in their new locksmith business within the first 12 months of trading, this is one of the highest percentage across any trades and new business, but why?

Any new business can fail, no matter what it is and no matter how much money was put into setting it up. A retail store may not have researched the area or niche and not realised that the actual demand for their particular type of store or their product or service was very low and a tradesman may have trained as an electrician, plumber or heating engineer without realising that his or her local area was already saturated with these trades all fighting for works and that a number of tradesman had already built up a solid reputation in the area leaving no room for a newcomer.

This doesn’t just happen with tradesmen such as electrician, plumbers, plasterers and within the retail sector. The I.T. boom over the last couple of decades saw a huge amount of web designers and internet marketing experts launch businesses in every corner of the UK, the demand was high and I know many web designers and internet marketing companies that have more work than they can handle yet other companies and individuals fail within 12 months, lots of them.

The failure of web designers and internet marketing experts tends to be down the them either not being any good like the Wordpress and Wix installers who really believe that they are web designers but come unstuck when something requires actual skill or being one of those companies that excessively over charges it clients and ties them into minimum term contracts and whilst this will earn them a lot of money initially, word soon gets around and their work dries up forcing them to close and good riddance too

 

So What about Locksmiths? Why Do So Many Call it a Day after such a short period of time?

The first thing you need to understand about the locksmith industry is that it is currently unregulated, meaning that anyone can legally tout for work as a locksmith without any skill or training whatsoever and some do, take the handy men who’s changed the odd barrel or lock, he’ll now start to call himself a locksmith or locksmith and general handyman but after a few failed jobs and some negative feedback he’ll probably call it a day and go back to being just a handyman.

 

So want about the Locksmiths claiming to be professionally trained?

In a unregulated industry like the locksmith industry someone advertising as Fully Trained or Professionally Trained doesn't mean a great deal as there are a number of so called locksmith training centres offering 3 and 5 day training courses with a claim that you’ll be a qualified locksmith at the end of it, which it utter nonsense, you can’t learn and entire trade in a few days.

These amateur locksmith training centres work on numbers, offering cheap, quick courses and getting as many people through the door as possible and what you end up with are dozen of clueless locksmiths passing through their training centre ever month and saturating the industry with amateur locksmiths who soon find out that they are out of their depth and call it a day within 12 months

The Locksmith Industry is Changing

Back in early 2019 Train Locksmiths - The Only locksmith training centre able to call themselves a college due to their instructors being qualified teachers - Developed two brand new  in-depth locksmith training courses, one for commercial and domestic locksmith sector and one for the automotive sector that were to take around 6 months to complete and included online, written and practical modules, these courses where then regulated by OFQUAL in October 2019 making them the first locksmith training courses to be official recognised by this regulatory body and the first locksmith training courses that could be run at colleges and universities, in fact Manchester University official backed the courses at their launch and are scheduled to run them in 2020/21.

These OFQUAL regulated courses are the only courses currently recognised in the industry but at the moment it's not a legal requirement to hold this certification to trade as a locksmiths meaning that the amateur training centres are still peddling their worthless course and still churning our amateur, unskilled locksmiths all of which are doomed to fail.

For more information on the official course check out the links below

Level 3 Diploma In Commercial Locksmiths And Property Security

Level 3 Diploma In Automotive Locksmiths And Vehicle Security