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

A HECTIC WEEK IN THE OFFICE!

The 3D Group head office feels like it’s gone into over-drive in the last few weeks. We have so much happening at once in various departments that the office is a bustling hive of development.

To give you a taste of some of the exciting, if not a little stressful developments happening here at 3D Group HQ, myself along with the other directors are going to try and submit weekly blog posts for you to read. Our aim for this blog is to give our customers a little insight into the inner workings of the company and to keep you up to date with industry news and developments.

Due to a number of reasons which we felt were impacting on our International customers’ experience when purchasing from us, we have chosen to ‘consciously uncouple’ 3D Group from our original courier TNT. We have chosen FedEx as our new international courier service as they seemed to offer services and more importantly prices that we felt would suit our customers’ needs better. I took the opportunity over the quiet bank holiday weekend to integrate the new FedEx system with our trade website. This has now been completed and International customers should be able to view live quotations for their orders in checkout.

We have been in the process of redeveloping our own version of the aftermarket Vauxhall/Opel remote cases (VXRC4 & VXRC5). We were unable to control the build quality on the previous versions and to rectify this we have decided to manufacture our own. We are at the point in the production process where we have received samples and we have instructed a slight amendment to the mould in order to create a stronger seal when the two halves of the case are clicked together. These will then be ready to go into mass production and will be available to purchase soon.

Several weeks ago we used our Facebook andTwitter accounts to get our customer’s opinions on the black Ford blade horseshoes. We have always been a little miffed as to why Ford have never produced a blue version to match the remote, so we got onto our product team and 4 weeks ago we approved a blue horseshoe blade sample to go into mass production.

We were as excited as kids at Christmas when the first batch of 3000 arrived at our head office this week only to be bitterly disappointed when they failed our quality control tests and after a little investigation it seems that they are different to the confirmed samples! Back to the factory they go and in order to fast track delivery of the first batch we have asked our manufacturer of the black versionFOB3C to change the colour and quickly produce 1000 blue ones which should be delivered in 10 days’ time. I can hear you questioning why I didn’t just use this manufacturer in the first place, the simple reason is we have so many products already in development with this factory that they can’t possibly accept any more orders from us. In order to speed up the manufacturing process we were hoping to split it across two factories. Luckily they are able to help us out with a smaller quantity for now.

Another new product to add to our ever expanding catalogue is the Super OBD SKP-900 key programmer. Having tested this machine ourselves we believe that this is an ideal machine for new start-ups or perhaps as a secondary machine for an established auto locksmith. Having received our delivery of the SKP-900 we felt that the supporting documentation and information was not clear enough due some minor translation issues so our marketing and GeeKey advice team has got together and re-written the supporting information and application lists which will be free to download from our websiteonce the machine is available for general sale. For more information about the SKP-900 take a look at our website here.

We moved into our current warehouse and offices a little over 2 years ago and with all of these new products that we are developing we are quickly outgrowing the space we have! Our chief director David Sanderson has an eagle eye for a good bit of real estate and has the ability to see past a dilapidated shell so last month he completed the purchase of the neighbouring property with a view to knock through and extend our current warehouse and office space. Plans for redeveloping this run down property are already underway so watch this space (or the space next door to be precise!)

I suppose business expansion and increasing workforce go hand in hand and new employees are becoming a regular thing at 3D Group. This week, along with our warehouse supervisor Richard, I’ve had couple of mornings full of interviews in order to increase our warehouse staff numbers. We’ve had 70 applicants and the candidates have been varied but there have been some promising hopefuls, the next step is to get a select few in for a trial day and see how they cope. I’ll update you when we have found ‘the one’!

I could also tell you about confirmed meetings with the lovely people at Renaults’ head office in France, the development of the new 3D Group trade website and our preparations for the upcoming ALEX exhibition in addition to the new products, new premises, and new staff that have occurred this week but I’m conscious that this is turning into War and Peace so I’ll have to save these little nuggets of information for the next instalment. Right now I think I need to go and have a calming cup of tea before my next meeting!