Every company has an origin story it tells at parties. Ours is
slightly embarrassing, because it was not a strategy. It was a name.
An English Name in a Dutch Trade
Search for a locksmith in the Netherlands and you will scroll past a long line of Dutch words. Slotenmaker
this, sleutelservice that. Sensible names, chosen by sensible people for a Dutch market.
We called ourselves Locksmith. In English. Which, in a directory full of Dutch trade names, stands out roughly the
way a bicycle stands out in a canal.
The reasoning at the time was simple enough: it says exactly what we do, and it is a word almost everyone recognises.
What we had not thought through was who would find it.
The People Who Found Us First
Here is the thing about being locked out at night in a country you have just moved to. You do not calmly look up the
Dutch word for the trade you need. You type what you know. You type locksmith, in English, because that is the
word your panic reaches for.
And there we were. Not because we were clever, but because we happened to be the thing they were literally typing.
So a striking share of our early phone calls came in English. Students who had pulled a door shut behind them.
People three weeks into a new job in a city they could not yet navigate. Families in a rental where nobody could say
how many keys were still out there. They were not our target audience. They were just the people the name found.
What They Taught Us
Those calls were different in a way we did not expect, and it took a while to understand why.
A Dutch customer standing at a locked door has one problem. Our English-speaking customers usually had four at once.
A lock, yes. But also a landlord they had never met in person, a lease written in a language they were still learning,
an insurer whose entire website assumed they read Dutch, and underneath all of it a low hum of worry that they were
about to be quoted a number they had no way to sanity-check.
That last one stayed with us. Being new somewhere makes you an easy mark, and everybody knows it, including the
people in our trade who are happy to use it. If you cannot tell a normal price from an outrageous one, you have to
simply trust whoever turns up. That is a horrible position to put someone in.
So we started doing small things differently. Quoting the full price on the phone, before anyone got in a van, so
there was no moment of discovery at the door. Saying the number in euros, plainly, and never adding to it afterwards.
Making sure the person who picked up the phone could actually hold the conversation in English rather than apologising
through it. Writing invoices that an insurer or a landlord could read without a translator.
None of that was innovation. It was just what those calls needed.
Why It Shaped Who We Are
Over time the habits we picked up from those customers turned into how we run the whole company, for Dutch and
English speakers alike. Fixed, published prices. All-in numbers with VAT and call-out already included. Verified
locksmiths rather than whoever answered. An itemised digital invoice every time, whether or not anyone asked for it.
It turns out that the standard you set for the customer with the least ability to check up on you is a rather good
standard for everyone.
These days we say it out loud, in the form of a promise we are happy to be held to: you pay exactly what a Dutch
customer pays, you hear the price before we set off, and you get English from the first call to the invoice. We call it
the Expat Fair-Price Guarantee, and it exists because of the
people who found us by accident and then told us what they actually needed.
Still the Same Deal
The name has not changed and neither has the promise attached to it. If you are new here, or not new here but
still doing your life in English, the number below reaches someone who will talk you through it.
📞 Call 085 4000 911💬 WhatsApp us📝 Request a locksmith
Read next: our locksmith
service for expats, the practical guide to
locks in a Dutch rental, or
what we charge.
