Franchisee Stories - Loxley Locksmith & Security

Franchisee Success Stories

The owners who do well here aren’t looking for a magic formula. They’re people who’ve already run something, fixed something, or managed a team, and they’re tired of building someone else’s balance sheet. They want a real trade with real margins, backed by a system that actually answers the phone when a customer calls at midnight.

Call (682) 281-8985

Meet Our Owners

Bethany D. - Fort Worth, Texas

Before Loxley, I spent twelve years managing inventory for a regional auto-parts chain. I knew how to run a warehouse, negotiate with vendors, and keep a crew on schedule. What I didn’t know was how to turn that into something I actually owned. A cousin in Houston had gone with a different home-service franchise and spent two years fighting the corporate office over territory boundaries and ad fund spending. That wasn’t going to be me.

I found Loxley through a Kingswell recruiter who didn’t try to sell me a lifestyle. He walked me through a P&L from an existing market, showed me how the call center works, and let me ride with a technician for a full Saturday. I saw the difference immediately. When a customer calls, a live person picks up. When we give a price, it’s written on the invoice before the first pin is pulled. No surprises, no haggling, no technician standing in a doorway trying to upsell a panicked homeowner.

I opened in Fort Worth in 2019. My husband runs the books. I handle scheduling and vendor relationships. We have six technicians now, all background-checked, all in uniform with their names on their shirts. The 365-Day Done Right Promise isn’t a gimmick we trot out for marketing. It’s the reason customers mention us to their neighbors. We’ve had maybe a dozen callback jobs in four years, and every single one got fixed fast, no argument, no invoice. That kind of word-of-mouth is worth more than any billboard.

What changed? I work harder than I did at the auto-parts chain, but I own the equity. When my daughter needed braces, I didn’t fill out a reimbursement form. I just wrote the check.

Veronica G. - Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

I was a military spouse for fifteen years, which means I got good at starting over. I ran a small cleaning business at Fort Bragg, then did property management for a complex near Camp Lejeune. Every time we PCS’d, I left behind whatever I’d built. By the time my husband retired, I was done with that cycle. I wanted something portable in concept but rooted in a community.

I looked at several home-service franchises. Most of them wanted me to believe I could run the business from a laptop on a beach. That sounded like a recipe for angry customers and high technician turnover. Loxley was different. Sam Rourke, who heads up owner development, told me straight up: this is a local business. You need to know your locksmiths, your property managers, your school district facilities directors. You need to be the person they think of when a master key system fails the week before school starts.

I launched in Raleigh-Durham in 2021. The training was two weeks in Dallas, hands-on with actual locks, not PowerPoint. I learned to rekey a Schlage deadbolt, program a Medeco key system, and troubleshoot a Mul-T-Lock cylinder. More importantly, I learned how to price those jobs honestly and how to explain to a customer why a $29 hardware-store lock and a $180 commercial-grade deadbolt aren’t the same thing.

The Kingswell Guarantee is what closes most of my commercial accounts. Facility managers have been burned by locksmiths who quote low, show up late, and disappear when the new master key doesn’t work on the south-wing doors. I give them a written price, a real arrival window, and a guarantee in writing. If it fails, we come back. No charge. That consistency has gotten me three school district contracts and two property management groups that manage over four hundred units.

I make my own schedule now. I still work Saturdays sometimes, but I also take Wednesday afternoons to volunteer with a veterans’ job placement group. Nobody writes my PTO policy.

Daniela S. - Albuquerque, New Mexico

I grew up in a family of contractors. My father was an electrician, my uncle a plumber, my cousin a HVAC tech. I went to college, got a degree in marketing, and spent eight years at an agency in Phoenix writing copy for software companies. The money was fine. The work felt like vapor. I couldn’t point to anything and say, I made that happen.

I moved back to Albuquerque to be closer to my mother. I considered starting my own locksmith operation from scratch, but the capital requirements were steep, and I didn’t have the vendor relationships or the call volume to survive the first lean year. Loxley offered something in between: real independence, real support, and a brand name that meant something when I walked into a property management office cold.

The thing that sold me was the pricing discipline. At the agency, I’d watched clients bait customers with teaser rates and bury the real cost in fine print. Loxley does the opposite. We say the price before the work. Every time. No exceptions. That aligns with how I want to operate, and it turns out customers notice. My Yelp reviews almost always mention that the invoice matched the quote.

I opened in 2020, which was terrible timing for most businesses and surprisingly good for locksmiths. People were home, noticing their worn-out locks, their stuck deadbolts, their single-point-of-failure garage door hardware. I hired two technicians that first year, then a third. We’re up to eight now, including my brother, who came over from residential electrical work.

The Kingswell Way isn’t a poster on a wall. It’s how we handle a call at 2 a.m. when a restaurant manager has a break-in and needs the locks changed before the health inspector arrives. Show up in the window we gave. Leave the place cleaner than we found it. Put the guarantee in writing. Come back if it fails. My technicians know those four promises by heart, and they know I’ll back them up if they need to spend an extra hour getting something right.

Javier G. - Tucson, Arizona

I was a locksmith before I was a Loxley owner. Fifteen years in the trade, starting as an apprentice in my uncle’s shop in El Paso, then running my own one-man operation in Tucson. I knew how to pick a lock, impression a key, install a Sargent exit device. What I didn’t know was how to grow past myself. I was the business. If I got sick, revenue stopped. If I wanted a vacation, I turned down jobs.

I joined Loxley in 2017 because I needed systems, not because I needed to learn locksmithing. The Kingswell call center was the immediate relief. A live person answers 24/7, books the appointment, sends the confirmation, and handles the follow-up survey. That alone gave me back ten hours a week. But the bigger value was the brand standard. My customers had always gotten good work from me. Loxley gave me a framework to promise it consistently, in writing, with a guarantee that outlasted my personal reputation.

The 365-Day Done Right Promise changed my relationship with commercial clients. Before, I’d warranty my work for thirty days, maybe ninety if I really trusted the hardware. Now I guarantee it for a full year, and Loxley’s vendor relationships mean I’m not eating the cost on a defective Baldwin mortise cylinder. The manufacturer stands behind the product, and I stand behind the installation. That chain of accountability lets me bid jobs I would’ve walked away from before.

I have fourteen technicians now, three vans, and a shop where we do high-security key duplication and access control programming. I’m still in the field once a week, mostly on the complex jobs, the ones where a property manager needs a full master key system rekeyed over a weekend. But I’m also home for dinner most nights, which wasn’t true when it was just me and my van.

The name Loxley still makes me smile. Locks-ley. Most people don’t catch the Robin Hood reference, and that’s fine. What they catch is that we answer the phone, we show up when we say, and we put our promises on paper.

Your Story Starts Here

If you’ve run something before and you’re ready to own it, call us at (682) 281-8985. Sam Rourke handles owner development directly, and he’ll send you the info kit with real numbers, real territory availability, and a straight answer about whether your background fits what we’re building. No deposit required to start the conversation.

Written by Sam Rourke, Owner & Lead Locksmith, Loxley Locksmith & Security, serving the Kingswell family of companies since 2007.