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In the last two months, West Africa Ceramics Limited’s (WACL’s) development train has been moving round Nigeria, opening new experience centres that establish its signature as foremost manufacturer of quality tiles and allied products in the country.
The train landed in Lagos last weekend where it opened its Royal Experience Centre which authorities of the company say is aimed to support federal government’s efforts at resuscitating local content/production through effective distribution network to ensure that products are available at the right time, right place, and at the right price.
“The Royal Experience Center initiative is also aimed to ensure delivery of products in a way that encourages the consumer to cultivate and sustain the ‘Buy Nigeria’ behaviour because the consumer does not just buy products, but also buys the collective experience of product quality, affordability, and reliability delivered; they also buy acquired product knowledge and application, unmatched customer service, and all the functional attributes of the product,” added Bhaskar Rao, WACL’S general manager.
Rao added that the purpose of the mega experience center located along the Lekki-Epe Expressway goes beyond being a showroom where tiles are displayed to a hub designed to enlighten customers on the applications of various designs and types of tiles in a building project and also to create an unprecedented shopping experience for customers as obtainable overseas.
He explained that the showroom was an initiative set out to strengthen dealer-relations and channel management in a way that consumers would experience tile shopping different from the norm but obtainable in developed societies.
Built environment professionals and sundry stakeholders at the opening event commended WACL for this initiative. Kenneth Nduka, President of the Nigerian Institute of Building (NIOB), hoped that the establishment of the experience center would, indeed, serve as a unique distribution outlet to serve housing development requirements of the Lagos megacity project and whet the appetite for high taste and good quality finishes by highbrow property developers in the state.
He listed the uses to which tiles are put in a building project ranging from the artistic, decorative, flooring, walling, roofing, ceiling to structural, illumination and signage. “In all these uses, appropriate specification and proper application remain the essential yardstick for the attainment of the desired functions it will perform and the right purposes it will satisfy in a building”, he said.
He also pointed out that building was of critical use to human existence, stressing that the need to master and overcome the complexity and complications associated with its production and delivery processes, including implementations, applications, services and functions, requires discipline and appropriate professional guide.
Nduka argued that if the continued successful practice and development of building technology and management as well as product quality are to be guaranteed, all these processes must be assured devoid of progressive failure and eventual collapse.
CHUKA UROKO
