During the last forty years Aaron Fish has been the best known person in the hardware industry. He brought together a group of companies such as Ilco, Dominion, Simplex, Taylor plus many more and assembled them under the Ilco Unican banner. Mr. Fish also owned Locksmith Ledger magazine at one time and he continues to send information to me when he feels it has some value for our readership. Copies of two newspaper articles were recently received from Aaron Fish.
One article described a company in Colorado which has developed a do-it-yourself key duplicating machine. According to the article, their Minute Key machines have been installed in locations such as BJ's Wholesale Club, Safeway and Wal-Mart. Customers insert their operating key into the machine and the key is automatically copied and dispensed. There reportedly are approximately 3,000 Minute key machines currently installed in the U.S. and Canada and the estimated revenue in 2015 for the Minute Key Machine company will be 35 million dollars.
The second newspaper article sent in by Aaron Fish describes the close relationships between companies in the silicon valley of California and auto makers in Detroit. Companies such as Ford, Chrysler and Tesla are 'cross pollinating' with high tech research labs in an effort to add more electronic features to vehicles. As example, Ford and Audi are experimenting with driverless cars. The average new car has at least 40 electronic control units onboard. According to the article most new cars use more lines of computer coding than is used in a fighter jet.
My return E-mail comment to Aaron Fish was that automated key duplicators can be successful because a large percentage of commercial locks today use either SC1 or KW1 keyways. These machines only have to stock key blanks for a small group of keyways. Locksmiths can continue to be successful in the near future by charging a premium for the thousands of keyways which these automated machines are not prepared to duplicate.
Taken together, these two articles do indicate a movement in the security field which must be closely watched. While the automated key company may have 3,000 key machines in the field today, the demand for duplicate SC1 and KW1 keys may not be increasing. At the same time, the second article indicates how electronic features in vehicles is on the rise. Latchbolts which secure a door to the jamb will always exist but the system for releasing that latchbolt is subject to change without notice. If Aaron Fish is concerned about what lies ahead then we should also be concerned.
