From the April issue, I wrote about how my father, Stuart Johnson, built momentum in the business through the 1950s and 1960s, establishing strong relationships across Australia which help to shape LSC’s national presence.
By the late 1970s, the industry was changing. The Australian market required an increasingly broad range of key blank profiles, many of them low-volume, making it uneconomical for local manufacturers to keep pace. At the same time, competition was intensifying.
The challenge was clear: to properly service the Australian market you needed access to thousands of profiles, but the volumes simply didn’t justify local production. We could no longer rely on EzyCut alone. A new approach was needed.
That turning point came in 1977 at the ALOA trade show in Albuquerque, where my father met a young Italian, Massimo Bianchi, whose family owned Silca. At the time, Silca was Europe’s largest manufacturer of key blanks and machines. That meeting would prove pivotal.
Silca was not entirely unknown in Australia, with small volumes of blanks and machines previously imported. However, it was my father’s ability to form a direct partnership with Silca that changed everything, establishing a relationship that would span almost 50 years.
In the early years, Silca played second fiddle to EzyCut, but its reputation quickly grew. Locksmiths began to recognise the quality and precision of Silca machines, with features such as sealed roller bearings, precision-machined reversible jaws, semi-automatic operation and high-quality milling cutters which set a new standard for the industry.
As awareness increased, so too did the appeal of Silca’s extensive range, offering over 3,000 profiles locally and more than 10,000 globally. In a market where range mattered as much as reliability, Silca provided a compelling solution.
I joined the business in 1982, initially planning to stay for a short period. That quickly changed. I found an immediate affinity with both the locksmithing industry and the dynamic world of importing and distribution, a space that was becoming increasingly competitive.
Around this time, it became clear that Silca had overtaken EzyCut as our predominant brand, and we began actively positioning the Italian manufacturer as the number one choice in Australia.
The introduction of Silca marked more than just a new product range - it signalled a strategic shift that would help shape the future of LSC.