Celebrating the Award-Winning Dulux Academy

What have Customers been using the Academy for?

Since opening we have been delighted with the uptake of training at Dulux Academy. Our customers have been a mix of decorators that are very familiar with us as a brand and those who are less familiar or just starting out in the industry as a career changer.

We have also hosted two Master Class events for current Apprentices of our customers to top up their college learnings on specific areas of decorating for example coving and wallpapering. Recently we have seen a number of college lecturers use Dulux Academy for their own development particularly connected to Spray application. Since opening we've had over 1,000 people on courses!

How can customers and their customers benefit from it?

We have had a number of customers visit us to understand about our full offer and in the main they are surprised by the breadth of offer we can provide. The biggest shock is our offer in the Business Management and the fact that we can offer recognised qualifications including our exclusive City & Guilds Level 3 and the IPAF and PASMA accreditations. Our recently launched course prospectus is really helping with showcasing exactly what is available and at what cost.

The team are experienced decorators who know their stuff so customers have liked meeting them and talking through problems or issues they are having with jobs they are working on. Our credibility is also being helped with having so many industry leading suppliers on board. It's been a great first year and we were delighted to be awarded the British Coating Federation (BCF) Excellence in Training Award amongst our competitors.

What courses have decorators loved this year?

Our Introduction to Spray and Wallpapering Tips & Techniques have been our most popular courses this year. As such we have introduced two new advanced spray courses for 2017 which are being positively received.

The Digital Murals course provides decorators with a new skill and something that they can use as a differentiator against their completion as successful completion of this enables the decorator to be a preferred supplier to the manufacturer. We are looking at this for some of the other specialist courses we offer.

What are you looking forward to training next year?

We have a number of new courses for next year. We have introduced new Colour and Design courses to link with completion of our exclusive qualification and also new Business Management courses to aid the more commercial side of running a decorating business including titles such as Money Matters, Winning & Keeping Customers and Smart Selling.

Now we have the prospectus published we will use 2017 to talk to customers about our whole offer and understand if anything is missing so we can ensure we are delivering what our customers want and need from us for the future.

Our new Website has the prospectus as a download www.duluxacademy.co.uk.