Sarah Humphreys, Sales Director, tells the Premier Alarms story.
Premier, our family business, has been in our bones for as long as I can remember. Perhaps sadly, I can remember writing a story about movement detectors aged 7. I can also remember creating an advert and a rap (!) for Premier with my sisters on our family holiday. I can even remember helping my Dad to build his first shop, rewarded by the latest 90s troll available at the time!
Vince (Dad) started Premier aged 31 in 1987. He had been a locksmith and an alarm engineer and having worked for the big national security companies, knew he wanted to go at it alone with a priority on the superiority of product and service. He had seen how customers and staff were treated purely as a number, and he wanted to do things differently. A perfectionist by nature, he started to build a reputation quickly on the back of the workmanship he delivered and began to expand on the security disciplines offered and the geographical location covered. Delivering quality for valued clients was the ethos from day one and over our 40 years of operation, blood, sweat and tears have been poured into the business to ensure this never wavered.
Fourteen years ago I was snowed in, running my media team in London from my parents’ house, where I lived at that time. Perhaps Dad saw me in a new ‘working’ light for the first time, but that day following, he offered me the opportunity to come into the family business. This had just been mum and dad’s gig so far and as a family that are super close, I was nervous for what this new dynamic of working together may bring. One thought always kept coming back to me however; mum and dad have worked so hard to create the business that Premier is today and I don’t want that to be sold to another company. I was proud of what they had achieved and I wanted to see that continue for years to come.
Fast forward to today, I have been a part of the business since that point and have never looked back. My two sisters, Megan and Laura, both then joined the business and now run our operations team and our finance team respectively. We are three women running a security business, which is somewhat unique in a traditionally more male-dominated field, and we relish the refreshed approach this allows us to take. Although it seemed somewhat organic each of us joining the family business, our individual skill sets are so suited to the different departments of the business that we have often questioned whether Dad knew the end game all along!!
People are often intrigued (and surprised!) as to how we work and live so closely together; we are constantly asked why and how. The answer is simply that we are all in it together; we support each other, we know what we want to achieve and how to go about it and we all have the same want to keep delivering on those core principles of quality, service and a personal touch. It is our livelihood, it is our everything, it is all that our family work for every day. Of course with such passion from all directions, there are tough times; we know that is the reality of a family business. We wouldn’t change it for the world though.
We love working with an amazing team. We love working with amazing clients. We love working with amazing partners. We also love working with amazing family and look forward to all the hard work and adventure that will be a part of Premier’s future. Now to sign up the grandkids…
