Blog Archive
Browse articles, updates, and security guidance for commercial shutters and storefront protection.
A customer once asked me for the toughest steel shutter I had. I told him I don’t sell steel. He looked at me like I was trying to hand him the cheap version. Fair reaction. Steel sounds stronger than aluminum, so if you don’t do this for a living, “aluminum shutter” sounds like a downgrade. […]
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Before somebody buys a shutter from me, the sharp ones ask a version of the same question. “Can’t they just pry it open? If someone really wants in with a crowbar, what am I actually paying for?” Good. Ask me that. A shutter is a serious purchase and you should know exactly what it does […]
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One of the people who sends me the most work installs security cameras for a living. Think about that for a second. A camera guy, referring his own customers to a shutter installer. He does it because he’s honest about what a camera can and can’t do, and he’d rather his customer hear it from […]
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A liquor store owner in the East Bay asked me a question I respect. He pointed at the shutter on the store two doors down and asked me, plainly, whether it actually stops anybody or just looks tough. Fair question. I’d rather he ask it out loud than pay me and quietly wonder later. So […]
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In six years I’ve logged more than a hundred and fifty storefront installs across Northern California. A while back I lined them up by the month they happened, just to see. The calendar wasn’t flat. Some months I’m buried. Others the phone barely rings. And the shape of it says something a little uncomfortable about […]
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If you own the building your store is in, skip this one. This is for the rest of you — the ones renting the storefront. Before you spend a dime on a shutter, your lease has two answers you need, and most tenants don’t go looking for them until it’s too late. The first: are […]
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A security shutter has one job: keep people out. The fire code has the opposite worry. It wants to be sure people can get out. On an occupied storefront, those two meet at the same opening, and the install has to satisfy both at once. Most owners never think about this until an inspector does. […]
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I install security shutters for a living, so take this with that in mind. But I lose jobs to people who quote cheaper than me, and a fair number of those owners call me back a year later to fix what the cheap guy left them. So I’d rather tell you how to pick right […]
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A grocery owner in San Francisco called me a couple of years ago, a few days after his store got broken into. I’ve taken a lot of these calls. This one stuck with me. He was shaken in a way the loss alone doesn’t explain. That store was his family’s whole living — the thing […]
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A pharmacy break-in doesn’t look like a liquor store break-in. I saw that the clear way after I put a shutter in for a pharmacy owner a few years back. At a liquor store, the person coming through the door at night grabs whatever’s close and sells it. Bottles, cartons, the register. It’s opportunity. At […]
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