80 • SAFES
Neil Coulson
– Crest Lock
& Safe
» » IN 1988, NEIL COULSON
started a job as an apprentice
locksmith with North East
company Lewis Lock and Safe.
He had a natural aptitude for
the job, and quickly developed
an interest in safe work. In 1998,
he left Lewis to start his own
business, Crest Lock and Safe.
As the business grew, Neil
realised that he was recovering
old ‘vintage’ safes, with little
real value, limited security
applications and no interest to
the scrap man.
Neil is naturally curious,
so decided to ‘do one up’ and
use it as a drink’s cabinet. The
first attempt was acceptable
- not great - but visitors to his
workshop seemed intrigued
by this. Simply seeing a safe
in an unusual colour in a sea
of grey, gold and silver started
many conversations. Over
several years, Neil began to
experiment with restoring old
safes, carefully refinishing the
bodywork and practicing with
paint finishes until his work
really began to get noticed.
This culminated with the
refurbishment of the ‘milk’
safe for Chubb in 2011.
Although this work was
interesting, and the finished
items could look quite
splendid, the fact that the end
result was still usually a low-
grade safe didn’t really justify
the amount of effort required
to effect the transformation,
or the costs involved. Looking
at luxury safes manufactured
in Europe, Neil thought
that it was time the UK had
something worthwhile to offer
too.
In 2010, Neil relocated the
business to larger premises in
Sunderland, where he invested
over £500,000 in showroom
facilities, a custom-built spray
room with full extraction and
most importantly a multi-axis
CNC milling machine.
He knew that it was pointless
trying to manufacture his own
carcasses, as in order for the
concept to work he’d have
to be able to offer insurance
rated units. With a wide range
of proprietary units available
in the UK (many of which
are manufactured in Eastern
Europe or Asia) it seemed that
he’d be spoiled for choice.
“This was another major
learning curve”, said Neil, “and
we quickly discovered that as
with most other things in life,
you get what you pay for. We’ve
invested heavily in plant and
equipment and learned new
techniques that allow us to
produce a world-class finish. I
quickly discovered that a safe’s
rating has little to do with its
overall aesthetic quality – no
matter how secure its rating
suggests it might be.
“Some of the models that
we trialed took many days of
work before we could achieve
anything like a satisfactory
finish, I realised that this
wasn’t a good way to go on
as this was a crazy amount
of time to spend on a carcass
before we even began to build
the interior or refinish the
boltwork. We needed to be
more choosy The answer was
to deal with manufacturers
with whom we could have
some direct input (in other
words, if the quality is crap,
we can tell them!). This led
to us taking the decision
that for our own bespoke
safes, we will only use British
manufacturers.
“This was a good move and
we now know that we can
expect a consistent quality in
our supply chain. Of course,
we have competitors, but as
the trade and end users are
discovering, building a luxury
safe is more than painting a
metal box in a different colour
and sticking some MDF shelves
inside – yes, we’ve seen this.”
And so, alongside Crest
Lock and Safe, a new brand
– Coulson – was born.
Everything that they build is
made to order. There are no
‘stock’ items. No pricelists.
Neil Coulson loves his cars:
“There’s a company called
Overfinch who custom-build
Range Rovers – they take a car
that’s a production line model,
then they rebuild it. It’s still a
Range Rover underneath, but
it’s now beautifully built to the
customer’s exact specification.
Titan Black do the same with
Rolex watches. Coulson do it
with safes.”
LOCKSMITHJOURNAL.CO.UK | NOV/DEC 2018
Sponsored by ABUS