Page 32 - HW 0822

kitchens & bathrooms
Pacific
products aplenty
Pacific wall flanges are available in pipe sizes from 15mm to 150mm diameter in black, copper, brass, gold, gun metal grey, stainless steel, brushed stainless as well as white and chrome and are New Zealand made from plastic and stainless steel.
Also new from Pacific is a Shower seat / space saving seat. With soft open and close, holds up to 200kg and is made from anti-bacterial, environmentally-friendly ABS plastic. Chrome front edge, 360mm wide x 298mm deep when folded down and only 60mm deep when closed.
Last but not least, Pacific Plumbing Solutions is also now making black metal shower hoses from strong anti-corrosive metal, in any length from 500mm to 6 metres.
https://pacificplumbing.co.nz/
“exceptional promise and skill during their first off-job training course and having completed their first assignment.”
Unlike previous years’ winners who have largely worked
for independent designers and manufacturers, this year’s recipient was Sushil Patel, from Mitre 10 MEGA Porirua, who came to kitchen design already armed with a freelance design background.
Sushil says of his achievement: “Winning the Most Promising Student Award was a pretty big buzz! I was very surprised that I won in the first place, given the talent and calibre of students coming through and the companies they had worked for.
“Judy Bark told me on stage that I’m the first male to win the award, which I thought was a great privilege to be a part of.
“Most Promising Kitchen Design Student” Sushil Patel from Mitre 10 MEGA Porirua (left): “People on the awards night ... were surprised to know where I worked.”
“I spoke to some pretty cool people on the awards night who were surprised to know where I worked.
“I suppose in hindsight, not many large home improvement retailers get the chance to receive such an award which is pretty special!”
Sushil’s NKBA tutor was NKBA President Mark Bruce, who sees Sushil’s achievement as something of a victory for the NKBA: “Sushil came from a retail kitchen environment which often conditions designers to work to speed and basically give the client what they want, rather than design to a brief.
“It became evident by the second day of the course that this wasn’t Sushil’s ethos; he wanted much more for his client and employer.”
As with the kitchen specialists, DIY retailers want qualified designers dealing with their clients because “They see the value in having that skill upfront and want their clients to be talking to a qualified designer,” says Mark Bruce.
“What we find encouraging, when one of those [DIY retail] designers comes through, they go back to the store and their sales just increase because their confidence is up, they’re designing good kitchens and the owner of that business can see it was worth sending them through the course.
“I see Mitre 10 as a bit like the McDonald’s of management in this respect. They train well and then the designers who do their turn with Mitre 10 might move on to become independents or work for other companies.
“So, just like McDonald’s, they provide a really good training base for designers that eventually go on to bigger and better things.”
With Mitre 10 managers and owners not universally but clearly quite widely supportive of this sort of external specialist training, it will be interesting to see how many other national DIY retailers and merchants also start to recognise there is potential for return on their investment in specialised external training in the coming months and years.
30 NZHJ | AUGUST 2022
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