Notice Board
FIRST EVER CHILDREN’ S BOOK ON LIFE AS A LOCKSMITH
Preparing for motherhood, Natahsa Pugh, Sales Director of APECS, had the ingenious idea of producing a young readers’ book on locksmithing. Richard Tracz, Marketing Manager, was up for the challenge.
» HEAR HOW THEY POOLED THEIR knowledge, storytelling and creative skills to help nurture the next generation of locksmiths. Richard Tracz told us:
How did the idea come about?
With Natasha expecting a baby( in January) she came up with the idea of producing a book to enable locksmiths to explain to their children or grandchildren what they do for a living. With Natasha’ s partner being a locksmith too, it would come in handy for them and many of APECS’ customers.
Project Journey: Unlocking Creativity
This project began with developing a narrative concept that set the foundation for the storyboard. Early drafts included loose ideas around key scenes and character development. The child being five-year-old Sam, who spends a day with his locksmith dad going out to a variety of typical jobs such as helping someone locked out, master keying at a school and helping an elderly lady who could have
access issues with a special automated lock. The theme of the book is how locksmiths keep people safe, positively impact lives and are, essentially,‘ heroes’ and part of first line in community protection / defence.
Once we had a storyboard outline confirmed, we appointed an illustrator who was experienced in creating illustrations for children’ s books, who translated these ideas into visuals. The pictures were at first just outlined, uncoloured renders, which we needed to review and make character adjustments. As a team we worked together to perfect the book over several weeks in collaboration with Nik Goncharov, Managing Director, Natasha and myself.
Distribution and Expansion
The book was ready early December, which was the perfect time to distribute copies of the book included in customers’ orders, a nice gesture just before Christmas and a great stocking filler. Feedback from customers has been very positive and the book has garnered interest both within and beyond the locksmithing community. It’ s been well-received as a celebration of the niche trade. Over 200 copies have been distributed so far and we’ re already planning for other promotional opportunities to circulate further.
Looking Ahead
The success has sparked discussions on expansion. Ideas include potentially branching into ebooks, exploring adjacent sectors like fabrication, and even representing other trades that often go unnoticed. This initiative aims to celebrate and highlight these underrepresented professions, drawing attention to their importance while fostering a new generation’ s interest.
Themes like education, empowerment and inclusivity are central to the project, with the aim of going further than the typified, surface-level policeman, doctor, baker and basic professional representations that current children’ s books provide.
This is just the start- this project opens doors for creativity and recognition across diverse, niche trades. There’ s noone better than the people in the trade themselves to take the initiative in writing young audience material to put job roles such as locksmithing on children’ s radars as an important role in everyday life.
How to Get a Copy …
It’ s such an exciting time for APECS and we do hope that we manage to nurture a few young locksmiths along the way.
If you are a locksmith, that does not currently have a FREE trade account with APECS, please reach out to them on 0121 468 2352 or sales @ apecs. co. uk quoting BOOKFEB – copies of the book will be supplied on first orders from new accounts opened throughout February.
18
JANUARY 2025
locksmithjournal. co. uk