IS THE SKP-900 ADAPTER AN AUTO LOCKSMITH’S NEXT MUST HAVE GADGET?

I think everyone is on the countdown for Christmas now and it’s a busy time for all, whether you have a shopping list as long as your arm to complete or you are trying to get as much of your work done before everywhere closes down for the Christmas holidays, not forgetting the odd Christmas party to attend. Along with the Christmas festivities December inevitably brings with it a flurry of illness. It seems that there are several bugs doing the rounds at the moment and this week we've suffered a number of staff shortages thanks to the winter germs and viruses. Unfortunately as a business director it’s something to be expected, but not something you can prepare for, as it can strike at any time. One thing we are proud of at 3D Group is our team of incredibly hard working staff and when the company experiences staff shortages everyone pulls together and works twice as hard to cover the extra workload without moaning.

As always we have another new 3D Group own brand product in the pipeline and it’s getting close to being ready for launch. This particular product is our own remote testing machine. Today I have finalised some artwork for it.The new remote tester will come with a 2.8 Inch touchscreen, have RF and IR testing functions that automatically work out the frequency and it will also allow you to test specific RF ranges. This remote tester has an accuracy of measurement +/- 10 kHz and also provides a dB graph on screen.This remote tester should be on sale before Christmas! Why not add it to your Christmas wish list or treat yourself to an early Christmas present?!

I am sure that we have mentioned before that 3D Group will not release a product before thoroughly testing it ourselves first. One such product that we have been testing over the last few weeks is the SKP 900 adapter. Our support team has been putting it through its paces on real life auto locksmith jobs and familiarising themselves with the product so that they can confidently offer support should the product be released for sale. The adapter claims to be able to read a vast array of chips as well as being able to write them when connected to a PC. It states it can copy chips, unlock them and create special chips amongst other uses. Several customers have been asking when we will be selling it and we are aware that some of our competitors already are, however the results of our testing process haven’t quite been up to scratch so I’ll let our Head of Support Martyn explain why 3D Group will not be stocking the SKP-900 adapter just yet. 

The Positives

• There is certainly potential for this machine in the future as it could be used for pre-coding.
• It is not required to be connected to a PC in order to work, simply connect it to the SKP.
• The ability to read transponder chips and some proximity remotes is a good function to have.
• The idea to include PC software to write and edit chips is a good addition.
• The key maker function does have the potential to use it for EEPROM work but it’s not quite there yet..
• The unlock function is useful to be able to reuse transponder chips.
• The copy function is helpful for the ability to clone a key from a working key.

The Negatives

• All of the functions mentioned above show great potential but in reality their current usability is poor.
• The PC software is inadequate as it comes with no instructions, and looks part finished in poor English.
• The key maker function comes without instruction so it is all guess work. It doesn’t currently come with an application list and therefore I wouldn’t trust this machine for EEPROM work.
• The copy function cloned fixed transponders with no trouble, however it wouldn't clone an ID46, and again there are no instructions and the onscreen English translations leave something to be desired. It did manage to Clone an ID60 after 4 attempts though.

Martyn's Verdict

"Although the SKP900 adapter has great potential, it really isn’t in a state where we can support and sell it with confidence without doing a lot more work with the manufacturers. Unfortunately 3D Group would not work in that way with Super OBD because of their distribution policies, which is a shame because there is a lot of potential in some of their products. We hope that small improvements over time will enhance the product so that we can reassess its viability in the near future. - Martyn"

We know that unlike many industries and services the auto locksmith trade doesn’t shut down over the Christmas period. In fact many of you will experience a busy couple of weeks with the increased risk of people losing their keys whilst out shopping and partying and the cold weather causing your customers all kinds of issues. To help make Christmas that little bit easier 3D Group will be open as much as possible over the Christmas period. Here are our festive opening times;

But we didn’t want to stop there, we would also like to offer all of our customers 10% off all purchases made online. 10% discount will be applied to all orders over the value of £150 + VAT placed via the 3D Group trade website between 2am 24th December 2014 and 3pm 31st December 2014. 10% Discount will be applied to all products purchased within the order as long as the total spend is above £150 before VAT or delivery is added.*

How to get your discount...

Place an order as usual on-line. You will not be able to see the discount on screen. Checkout as usual and when our sales staff process your payment they will deduct 10% should the order qualify.

*The 10% discount offered is valid between 24/12/14 - 31/12/14 inclusive. Discount is available on all products available from 3dgroupuk.com excluding the Silca Futura (MS63) Offers are subject to availability and are at the 3D Group Managers’ discretion. 3D Group reserve the right to retract offers from the public at any point. No voucher or code necessary.

We wish you all a great Christmas and a very prosperous new year!

Dean

CHANGES ARE AFOOT ...

It has been an exciting couple of weeks in the 3D Group offices with plenty of changes occurring and it feels like we are continuing to move onward and upwards, which is a rewarding and pleasing feeling.

Dan and I have not long returned from our business meetings in Europe. I know that I mentioned this trip in the previous blog and promised to tell you the outcome. Just to recap, as a result of the feedback we gathered from the ALEX show one thing that became apparent was that you wanted to see a bigger range of locks available. So Dan and I set up a couple of meetings with suppliers to discuss how we can improve this.

One of the major issues for us at the moment is warehouse space! Things are getting a little tight in the warehouse and every inch of space is very quickly filling up and we are even using the space under our desks for emergency overflow storage! To combat this, we have purchased the premises next door and in the New Year work will commence on connecting the two buildings and expanding our warehouse and offices. The outcome of these recent meetings is that we will soon be stocking a large number of genuine lock wafers, springs and more … just as soon as we find the space to store them! 

Ask anyone in the office and they will tell you that I dislike having time away from the office with a passion. I very rarely take annual leave and will work through pretty much any illness. Even the times when I have to be away I am always on the other end of the phone. It comes hand in hand with being a director of a family business and I really wouldn’t change it for the world. Obviously there are times when being away from the business is necessary and these recent meetings were one of these situations. It is s*ds law that within this week issues would arise in the office!

David kindly handled these issues in Dan and I’s absence however I always like to look into any issues myself so that I can fully understand them and resolve them where I can. One of the issues that arose concerned the new Lishi KeyCutting machine. As with most new to market products you can experience teething problems and even Silca aren’t immune to this. It seems that there are a few software issues that Lishi are currently working hard with their Chinese counterparts to resolve and a number of issues have boiled down to calibration of the machine. It’s a good feeling to know that all these issues are being resolved so quickly by the manufacturer as they are out of our hands. I have spoken to Lishi and have been told a new manual is being written to help all users with the machine.

Another issue that arose this week was as a result of a customer complaint. Here at 3D Group we do take the few complaints that we receive very seriously and always do our best to resolve the issue for the customer in question but also to put measures in place that ensure it will not happen again. For the second time this year we have had a customer report that one of our VXR9va Blades has broken their cutter. The first time that this issue occurred we tested the blades that came with the remote and it did not cause an issue when cut with our Silca Viper. We concluded that it might have been a rogue blade and agreed to monitor the situation.

However as a 2nd customer has now reported this to us we have opted to replace all of the blades in the VXR9va we have in stock to our own branded blade that we can be confident is a good quality metal and will not damage cutters. Any future stock will also have its blade changed and we are pleased that we have found a permanent solution to the issue.

We manufacture a lot of our own parts and we have recently made the decision to move the production of our 3D brand blades from the current source to a new factory. We have parted company with the previous factory due to a number of issues over the past year that have caused several headaches for myself and Richard but we hope things will be plain sailing from now on.

Another change happening in the 3D office is a change of staff in our sales department. This week we say a fond farewell to Alesha who is leaving us to embark on a new career and we wish her the best of luck for the future. Alesha has spent her last few weeks passing her knowledge on to her replacement and we would like you to join us in welcoming Nathan to our sales team.

One change that some of you may have already noticed is that we have launched our new-look front page for the 3dgroupuk.com website. We are currently in the process of developing a whole new trade website for you to enjoy however we needed to launch the pre-login part of the site earlier. In the past we have had to keep our sister company 3D Autokeys’ information on our 3D Group website until our SEO had improved on our 3dautokeys.co.uk domain. It’s been a long year for Rebecca in our marketing team pushing our 3D Autokeys SEO however thankfully our 3D Autokeys website is now self-sufficient and we have been able to alter 3dgroupuk.com to be entirely dedicated to our wholesale business. As I’ve previously mentioned, this is the first step of a number of improvements over the next year or so to our trade website. Rest assured that we will keep all of our product prices and descriptions exclusively for trade customers’ eyes only as we feel that it is detrimental to locksmiths for the trade prices to be available for public viewing.

The Super OBD SKP-900 Key programmer continues to be a popular product. As promised, Super OBD are staying true to their word and releasing regular free software updates. They have just released information about the next update planned to be released very soon which I’m sure will be very popular with customers.

SKP-900 V2.9 Update Plan:

1. LINCOLN MKZ Smart Key Program 2010-

2. LAND ROVER Range Rover sport Add system update 2 (434MHz)

3. Fiat 500 Remote Key Program 2011-

4. JAGUAR XF ADD Smart Key 2014-

5. Porsche Cayenne Read PIN Code & Remote Key Program 2004-

6. Add menu LINCOLN Key Program with HEC ID-4C (1999-2004)

7. Add menu LINCOLN Key Program with PCM ID-4D (2002-2004)

We are also waiting on the arrival of the new 46/4D/48 Adapter Plus tool that connects into the SKP, for Reading, Writing, Imaging, Unlocking, Coping and more. After some testing from our Geekey advisors more information about this product will be released.

Christmas is creeping up quick and we have now finalised our special offers for the Christmas period. These offers were incredibly popular last Christmas and more information will be included in the next 3D Group newsletter. We are aware that unlike many other industries the auto locksmith trade does not close for Christmas and therefore we limit the time that 3D Group is closed as much as we can. Our office will only be closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day & New Years day, on all other days (Mon-Fri) we will be open to take your order over the phone. Alternatively you will be able to place your order via the website 24/7 and your order will be despatched as soon as possible. Please bear in mind that Royal Mail delivery times tend to slow down throughout December and orders may take a little longer to get to you should we experience adverse weather.

I’m looking at the word count of this blog and thinking I should probably leave it there for now! There’s plenty more I could write about but I will have to save it for the next instalment! Please let us know what you think of the new website via our Facebook page and Twitter account, and I hope you have a great week!

Dean

NORMAL...WHAT'S NORMAL?!

So the madness of the ALEX show and the aftermath that ensued has now died down and we can all get back to a bit of normality…or so you would think!

I predominantly manage the retail and development side of the business and I have a great team of auto locksmiths and administration staff that help me. We are like one big family really and the 3D Autokeys family has just got a little bit bigger! Lee, one of our locksmiths and his wife Holly have just welcomed baby Phoebe into the world. She came a little bit earlier than expected but mum and baby are doing really well and Phoebe is beautiful.

Phoebe’s early arrival meant that Lee understandably went on paternity leave a little earlier than expected but in true 3D style we all pulled together. This meant that I was able to go back out on the road as an auto locksmith which is what I enjoy doing the most, serving customers, testing new products and topping up my experience.

Back in the early days of 3D Group I was the only mobile auto locksmith we had and I would be out in my converted Smart Car serving the good people of Nottingham which is why our old logo included the smart car image. How things have changed! We now have 4 fully kitted out vans and 5 auto locksmiths working for us.

Meanwhile back in the office, retail admin assistant Kelly has braved the Stoptober challenge. If you have never heard of this, it is where you have to quit smoking for the month of October (and beyond ideally). As I write this, it is now the 30^th October and Kelly has done really well. Despite it being a busy and stressful month in the office she has managed to go the whole of October without a cigarette and without any major mood swings! We are all really proud of her and we hope she can keep it up.

Obviously with me being out of the office on the road it has meant that the new products which have successfully passed our testing procedures have been sat on my desk waiting patiently to be uploaded to our website. So now that Lee is back I’ve spent this last week adding loads of new genuine Toyota remotes, Lexus remotes, a Smart car remote & Mini CAS remote to the website. All of these are now live and ready to purchase.

Dean and I are off to meet with suppliers to discuss some potential new product lines to add to our lock range this week and we will be able to give you an update of this in our next blog post. Have a great week!

AFTER ALEX ...

This year is going by so fast, I can’t believe it is only 10 weeks until Christmas! 3D Group has been so busy that the weeks are just flying by! Let me apologise for our lack of blog instalments over the last couple of weeks, we were all so busy getting ready for the ALExpo at the Belfry hotel in Nottingham. We are lucky that this key trade show occurs so close to home as tradeshows are really hard work and it’s nice to be able to go home to your own bed at the end of a busy day on stand. What customers may not realise is how much hard work goes into the organisation of 3D Group’s presence at the ALEX show, most departments are involved in some way. It begins with the marketing department booking and designing the stand along with designing and arranging advertising and e-newsletters months in advance. Then, when the weekend of the show comes around, the sales team and tech team get involved by working the weekend manning the stand and serving customers. After the tradeshow weekend the dispatch team then have an incredibly busy few days dispatching all of the orders placed at the show.

This year for the 3rd time running we decided to discount every product (with the odd few exceptions) sold at the show. Every time we have run this offer in the past our customers have been pleased with the substantial savings they have made. We also introduced a short questionnaire this year to ask customers that we met at the show. It was only a few short questions but it provided us with some great feedback about our customer services and products.

Although tradeshows are hard work, we actually love talking face to face with our customers. Our Geekey advisors love talking to others that are just as Geekey as them and many a long discussion was had over the course of the weekend. A big hit at the tradeshow was the Lishi cut to code machine. We had a demonstration model on stand at the show and these sold very well, largely due to the great discount that was offered on them. It was a last minute addition to the stand as it was only released the day before the show. Despite the machine being new to us, Martyn from our Geekey advice team did his best to show everyone how it worked and did a great job.

Another great seller for us during the show was the SKP-900. We sold out of the stock we had on stand as well as the remaining stock in the warehouse! Thankfully we’ve been able to replenish this stock pretty quickly.

We hope that everyone is enjoying their purchases as well as the huge savings they made. I almost had a heart attack when the final figures came through, the discount value for the weekend was over £10,000! Overall it was an incredibly successful show for us and plans are already underway for the Locksmiths Exhibition in March so we look forward to seeing you there!

After analysing the results from the customer feedback questionnaires, one product range that several customers suggested we could improve was our range of ignition locks. With this in mind, Dan and I are off for a number of meetings with suppliers abroad at the end of the month with a view to discussing the potential to expand our locks range. We’ll keep you updated on any advancements. If ever you have any suggestions on how we can improve, we are always keen to hear them and you can get in touch in several ways; phone, text, email or via our social channels, we will always take your comments on board and we are pleased to receive them.

Today I have been very excited to see a new stock range come into the office after a 5 month wait since ordering them. Over 25 newToyota remotes have arrived and after they have been through our quality control checks they should be active on the website in a few weeks’ time. It means 3D Group will be the biggest stockist of Toyota remotes in Europe (other than Toyota themselves).

5 Weeks ago you may recall that Richard and I were interviewing for a new job opening in the warehouse department and this week sees the start of Mike our new stock room assistant. He seems to have settled in really well with all the staff and is learning the job quickly which is a massive help to our warehouse team as it seems they have been non-stop for months now!

We will blog again once we are back from our supplier meetings in Europe with an update for you on the exciting new range of ignition locks we will have hopefully secured. You never know, we might even have a few surprises for you! We should also have an update on our warehouse and office expansion as plans are currently being finalised by the architect. Wishing you all a great week!

PURCHASING PREDICAMENTS

Now don’t get me wrong, I love working for the family business. It’s very rewarding to look around and to see how much we’ve achieved in a relatively short space of time. I get a huge sense of pride when we receive great feedback from customers and it’s great to know we are moving in the right direction, but every so often you have one of those nightmare days. I work predominantly in the purchasing department and between myself and Richard it is our responsibility to ensure a constant supply of products at great prices. Unfortunately in this trade it isn’t always as easy as it sounds, and more often than not it is supply issues (for one reason or another) that cause me headaches!

A number of you may have noticed a massive shortage on FOR3, FOR11 & FOR12 recently and this isn’t for want of trying to buy more stock in. For weeks we’ve been struggling to get hold of these remotes. It is common for the supply of vehicle remotes to sometimes dry up for a short period of time and occasionally the supply never returns, however on this occasion I have been informed that the delay is due to a small fire in the Visteon factory in china. This has caused delays on FOB8 as well. Hopefully FOR3, FOR11 & FOR12 supply will be back to normal next month, with news that around 2000 will be available in the coming weeks. I will do my best to secure as many of these remotes as I can!

When it comes to the supply of auto locksmith parts it can be a bit of a rollercoaster! You could have a constant flow of a product for ages and then it can all change within a month. This is often due to the dealership networks putting a stop to factories selling the remotes via other means, and as a purchaser this leaves you in a constant quandary. When the stock is there to purchase, should we buy the full quantity available just in case they won’t be available a month down the line? On a number of occasions we have had to take massive risks, paying tens of thousands of pounds for stock that will just sit in our warehouse for a number of years. For example the JR2 Jaguar remotes, some of you may remember that for a time we were selling this product at a great price of roughly £25. This was down to mass of surplus stock that Jaguar had in their factory. We bought all 3000 remotes available at a great price and passed these savings on to our customers. Unfortunately the 3000 remotes we purchased had to run out at some point, and although we’ve been able to purchase more stock we’ve never been able to get it at such a low price again. Luckily we can still get these remotes but there are some products that are just impossible to get unless they are pre-coded to the chassis number. This gives myself and the purchasing department a headache!

Recently we have been developing an aftermarket version of the FOR3 to sell alongside our genuine product. The aftermarket version will be priced at half that of the genuine one but will be almost identical. We have had this product in development for almost 8 months already and we’ve recently received our 3rdsample from the factory and have requested one final improvement that will make it one of the best aftermarket versions in the industry. We felt that although the remote was already better than those currently available, the buttons were not as strong as we would have liked so once this final tweak has been approved, we can get them into production and make them available to purchase!

One of our biggest marketing expenses is our presence at the industry trade shows. We feel that trade shows are a brilliant way to meet our customers face to face and they give us a fantastic opportunity to gauge customer feedback. It is important to us that we show ourselves to be the professional, knowledgeable company that we are so a lot of thought and planning goes in to the design of our stand, the marketing of the brand, and our show offers. Over the last few weeks our marketing assistant Rebecca has been planning our stand and offers for the ALEX show this weekend (4th/5th Oct). We have updated our stand design, we will be selling the SKP-900 key programmer machineand we will be offering discounts of up to 50% across the majority of our product range! These amazing discounts will only be valid on orders placed at the show so make sure you pay us a visit on stand 12A.

One advantage that 3D Group has over many of our competitors is our sister company 3D Autokeys, our mobile auto locksmith service that covers Nottinghamshire. There are 4 Auto locksmiths working for 3D Autokeys with over 60 years’ experience on the job between them and their experience makes them a wealth of auto locksmith knowledge. We decided to put this expertise to good use within 3D Group and last year we launched our GeeKey Advice service. This is our dedicated impartial support service that is free for all of our trade customers. Our auto locksmiths really are vehicle key geeks, we sometimes worry for their wives and girlfriends to be honest! However their geekiness provides our trade customers with the answer to pretty much any auto locksmith related question you can think of. As they are locksmiths themselves they will offer completely unbiased advice on anything from how to complete a particularly tricky job to what machine you should consider adding to your arsenal next. Our geeks are definitely worth a shout if you have a dilemma!

The GeeKey Advisors will be on stand at the ALEX show on the 4th and 5th October. It has been a popular service at every tradeshow we’ve taken it to, so if you have an auto locksmith related question you would like answering why not book an appointment with our GeeKey Advisor by e-mailing Rebecca at geekeyadvice@3dgroupuk.com

Last week may have been taxing to say the least but it ended on a high when my brother and I were invited to a corporate track day at Silverstone. We got to drive a Renault Megane sport 250 cup at high speed around the Silverstone track and a Ford Fiesta ST rally car around the rally track. We reached speeds of 140mph+ behind the wheel. It was a first for both of us and a great experience that we hope to repeat one day in the very near future.

Well I better go and finalise the discounts that we will be offering at the ALEX show, I really hope to see some of you there. Both myself and Dan will be on the stand along with Kerry and Ian from our sales team, Rebecca from marketing and Martyn our GeeKey advisor. We’re a friendly bunch and love to put faces to names so come and say hi!

Dean

THE MAN FROM RENAULT, HE SAY ....

There never seems to be a quiet week in the 3D Group office at the moment! This last week we have taken delivery of quite a few new products in the wholesale department, we’ve had a busy week of sales and we’ve dealt with it all whilst the dreaded lurgy has spread around the office!  

Whenever we receive a new product we put it through its paces before we list the product for sale on the trade website. 3D Group pride ourselves on the quality of our products, as well as our service, and in order to maintain the excellent quality that we have become known for we insist that we test every product that comes into our stock room. The one advantage that 3D Group has over many other auto locksmith wholesalers is our sister company 3D Autokeys. 3D Autokeys is a mobile auto locksmith service that covers the local Nottinghamshire area. As the trade half of the business 3D Group uses the expertise and knowledge of our 4 trained and experience locksmiths at 3D Autokeys to test products and machinery in proper situations before they are released for sale. We test remote cases for build quality & durability; we test Key blades for the quality of metal, and how accurately they cut; we test programming machinery on the vehicles it claims to apply to so that we can vouch for its usability. This all takes time but ensures that we can be confident that the products we sell to you work.

I couldn’t possibly go through all of the new products that we have here in this blog or you would be sat here for hours! The easiest way for you to see them is to take a look at the new products section of our website. One product that we are pleased has finally come in is our own Blue Ford horseshoes. If you have read our previous blog posts you will be aware of the palaver we have had with these, but I am pleased to announce that the first correct batch of FOB3cb have arrived they have been deemed to be in full working order and they are now on sale and selling very well! Another new product that we are now stocking is the CityRover immobiliser box. 3D Autokeys has received several enquiries from customers requesting replacement of lost CityRover vehicle keys. The problem is how to get the vehicle running when the remote or keys have been lost. The newCityRover immobiliser box will make the car run without a remote making the auto locksmith’s job a lot easier!

It’s been a busy week in our sales department! 3D Group has seen a very healthy increase in sales consistently for the last few years and this week has been no exception! It’s a bit of murphys’ law that one of the busiest weeks should coincide with several key staff members falling ill or being on annual leave! 2 of our sales assistants, Cory and Alesha have been ill whilst our sales manager Kerry was busy sunning herself on the beach! However in true 3D Group team style the remaining staff members have all pulled together and coped incredibly well with the added workload.

To follow up on a topic raised in a previous blog post we met with the head honchos from Renault France this week. The meeting was incredibly productive as we demonstrated that their genuine key cardscan be programmed using a variety of machines and not just by Renault: This was something that they did not believe was possible. Security was Renault’s main concern, as they believe that one of the reasons that their cars are in lower insurance bracket is due to the fact that you must order a Renault key to a chassis number. We explained the benefit of having a wider network of auto locksmiths that are able to supply replacement keys to the Renault managers. Currently to order a replacement key through a Renault dealership the customer would have to tow the vehicle to their nearest Renault garage and wait at least 10 days for a replacement to arrive. It is a benefit to their customers if they removed the chassis number restriction on the supply of their keys and made it easier for their customers to get a replacement vehicle key the same day, at a convenient location through a mobile auto locksmith. We gave Renault a lot of information which they now need to take back to their head office and digest. We are waiting to hear their thoughts on the information we presented to them but we know that this could take a while.

3D Group is a family run business and when things in the office are as manic as they have been it’s easy to let family occasions slip by unnoticed. It was my father’s birthday last week and as a birthday present to him and an opportunity for some quality time with our dad, myself and Dean took Dave to the golf course for the day. Anyone in the office will tell you how competitive our family are when it comes to sports! However we are all complete novices when it comes to golf so there were a few frustrated expletives uttered as we worked our way around the course but it was good fun and I think Dave enjoyed it.

I’m looking forward to this week. Myself and Dean have been invited to a corporate day at Silverstone for a track day which should be a great experience and a good chance to network with other company directors. I’m sure our competitive nature will shine through … It can’t be all work and no play can it?....

Dan

REGULATION FOR THE AUTO LOCKSMITH TRADE?

Debate seems to be the word of the week in the 3D Group office this week! We do like a good natter and there’s been some interesting topics of conversation being bandied about with a mixture of opinions.

Besides discussing the latest Xfactor contestants, and the great changeable British weather, one of the main work related topics that we’ve discussed is the availability of auto locksmith information and tools to every Tom, Dick and Harry. We aren’t talking about the experienced, qualified auto locksmiths here, we’re talking about Joe Bloggs off the street. Any criminally-minded person could quite easily get their hands on lock picking and key coding information and ‘how to’s’ on the internet. And then there are those suppliers and websites that would sell a programming machine to my gran if she said she wanted one! A recent example of this is Amazon.co.uk quite happily selling lock pick sets to anyone who wants one!

Making these products readily available on popular non-trade websites is only benefitting the consumer making them easy to buy and cheap. It is doing nothing to protect legitimate businesses that are currently operating within the industry and ultimately the consumer willexperience the negative side with higher risk of break-ins and car theft.

 I think we could probably all agree that it does need to be regulated in some way. The major debate occurs when you start to discuss who should be the governing body if one were to exist. Should it be the government? Should it be an organisation such as the Auto Locksmith Association or MLA? My argument would be that the government could do a lot more to restrict machine and tool imports from Europe and the Far East and ensure that machinery and tools being imported into this country are going to legitimate wholesalers like ourselves. There are some countries that already class locksmith tools as military tools. Maybe the UK should adopt this approach as it would make it harder to import machines, which protects the consumer and automotive locksmiths already in the trade. It would then fall to authorised wholesalers such as ourselves to ensure that we only supply these machines and tools to legitimate auto locksmiths and this is something that we already try to do.

We have the opinion that trade should be trade and we try and do everything in our powers to make sure it stays that way; we don’t sell on eBay, we don’t sell to anyone unless they have experience of some form in the trade or they are willing to provide a start-up plan of their automotive locksmith business. This would be made a lot easier if there was one governing body that auto locksmiths had to be registered with in order to operate in the UK. This would work in a similar way to gas engineers who must be ‘Gas Safe’ registered in order to work legally.

In the way that the industry currently operates, the only real winners are the manufacturers in China and the Far East. These companies are copying tools and machinery and making them so cheap that kids could buy them with their pocket money! This is making it very difficult for those that are trying to progress the trade legitimately. No sooner have you developed a new machine or product, then China come along and clone it! When thousands of pounds are put into the development of a new machine, to see it cloned and sold at an 8th of the true value is disheartening to say the least!

Anyway, I’ll get down off my soapbox for now. I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts and opinions on this matter, so please feel free to add your comment underneath this blog post.

On a more positive note, two years ago we felt the need to set up a meeting with Renault France after they halted our supply of Renault cards. Renault believed that only Renault machines were able to programme these cards and decided that supplying to us was a security issue. In this initial meeting we showed Renault that there are several machines that can program their Renault key cards such as the  Truecode. We explained that if they stopped supplying the genuine cards the Chinese aftermarket versions would become dominant in the market and in the long run Renault would lose out on sales of key cards. They agreed that it was in their best interests, and that of security, to continue the supply but they were in disbelief and seemed a little unsure that we were capable of programming the key cards. Fast forward to today and we have confirmed another meeting with Renault France. The main aim of this meeting is to prove to them that there are a number of machines that can program their cards (demonstrations in suits will be required I’m sure!) In return for our expert knowledge, we are hoping that we will be able to talk to them about fast tracking our supply chain. Fingers crossed!

Today is another day of coding for me. As the main website developer for 3D Group I am continuing to develop our new trade website. This system has already been in production for a year and it is taking a lot longer than expected. Our full system including our picking and packing, invoicing and stock control systems are being rewritten to improve the overall experience for our customers and our staff. When we ready to unveil our new look website we will be shouting it from the roof tops so keep your ears peeled for our dulcet tones!

With the ALEX exhibition fast approaching our marketing department is currently finalising our exclusive show offers and finishing the design of our exhibition stand. Keep your eyes on your email inbox as you will shortly be receiving further information but we can tell you that we will be offering discounts on almost all of our stock range on orders placed at the show. We will also be running our GeeKey Advice service on stand at ALEX as we did last time, so if you need any unbiased auto locksmith advice please book your appointment with one of our experts as soon as possible by emailing geekeyadvice@3dgroupuk.com

Well, this new website isn’t going to code itself, I best get back to it! My collegue Dan, another director here at 3D Group will be penning next week’s blog and we should hopefully have news from the Renault meeting to tell you about.

Dean Sanderson