BSA Celebrates 50 years of Trading

2021 is a special year for BSA, as they celebrate 50 years in the business. They are known for their extensive experience and expertise in the fire safety and security sectors. 

The company ‘BSA Security and Fire’ was started by Tony Willert in 1971 operating as part of a division of ‘Willert Electrical’. Starting his days working as an apprentice for ‘Lowestoft Electrical’ he later decided to go it alone, working from his garage at home and doing jobs from his estate van. 6 years later he bought his first business premises and to add to the growth, a couple of permanent staff member’s.

Tony had two sons David and Steve; they both spent a lot of their childhood years in their fathers office. They helped out with jobs, building cardboard storage boxes, cleaning vans and playing in the car pit, as the premises was a former car garage. 

David utilised the family business for his schools work experience, doing jobs such as filing and shredding. At that point he did not envisage himself following in his fathers footsteps. 

In his late 20’s David landed himself a job that required a lot of travel which gave him a choice of opportunities. At that point Tony presented David with a proposal, he invited him to come and work for the business, so that he could take a step down and become less involved.

Grabbing the opportunity David, with the support of Sarah, saw its potential and decided it would enable them to grow and give them the chance to settle somewhere. They decided to cut their travel time down to 5 months to explore, without working and then come back and get stuck into the new venture.

Whilst they were travelling Tony informed David that times were hard and unfortunately there had been a financial crash. Despite all this the business still continued to be successful.

Once David started, he could see clearly that there needed to be some updating implemented. First and foremost, the paper-based processes were automated. Within the first few years there was more change than there had ever been and has ever been since.