Technology

Crown Paints gives customers 1,000 colour choices on an app

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Ms Diana Omanga, Crown Paint’s head of digital department. PHOTO | COURTESY

Choosing a colour scheme may seem like a simple task, but this isn’t really the case. Many home owners have ended up painting the wrong colours, raising project costs on realising, for example, that it is not their dream decor.

Paint manufacturer Crown Paints Kenya’s mobile application dubbed Crown Colour App, available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple Store now makes it easier for customers to make a more accurate selection of their preferred home interior colour scheme.

Since its launch last year, the app has attracted 10,000 downloads and reduced the number of enquires at the firm’s call centre.

Diana Omanga, the head of digital department at Crown Paints says, the app makes its easy for users to navigate through more than 1,000 colours sorting by name and code in the colour chart.

Identify colours

They can also browse pre-installed home interior images or take a picture from their phone camera to retrieve and identify colours.

“Before we came up with the app, 70 per cent of enquiries at our call centre were people asking us to help them identify colours. This and feedback from customers led us to contract software developers to come up with this specific app to solve the problem,” Ms Omanga told the Business Daily in an interview.

“We found that both internally (within the company) and externally there was a serious challenge of matching the colours” she added.

Crown previously relied on its seasoned employees to identify the colours and “bulky machine” which customers could not have access to.

As currently designed the app is mainly used to help users  to make a more accurate selection of their preferred home interior colour scheme, however Ms Omanga said that the developers are working on extra features that will help users determine the quantity and price of paints .

This feature, she said, will help save cost by eliminating either buying excess paint or under quoting.

Also in the pipeline is the addition of a visualiser feature that  will allow users to play with colours they have picked on a 3D  model and see how it will look before they purchase and apply the paint.

“This application is already available on our website, however we now want to add it in the app to make it even more accessible ,” Ms Omanga said .

Rakesh Rao the company’s CEO said all the shade cards available at their showrooms can now be viewed by customers online.

“The app can detect the difference between wall space, furniture and fixtures and paints around contours in real time as long as the user does not move too much.

The app takes into account the light in the frame and adjusts the colour of the wall accordingly, so you can see what it will look like in genuine ambient settings rather than just present a blanket slab of colour,” Mr. Rao added.

Users can also browse pre-installed home interior images or take a picture from their phone camera to retrieve and identify colours.

Colour code

With these capabilities, Mr Rao said that the colour app will also appeal to professionals in different fields that work with colours, ranging from fashion designers, stylists and graphic designers, since it will give the exact colour code.

“Housewives, painters, professionals among others can download and use this application, not only for painting purposes, but also for other engagements that may require accuracy in colour.”

Users can save their favourite colours for future review or share with their friends their preferred colour names and codes via SMS, email, WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook or Twitter.

Upon settling on the choice of colour, existing and potential customers can visit the showrooms to place their orders. Crown Paints has established various showrooms that give the consumer an opportunity to interact with the products and have a look and feel of the actual products.

The app makes it easier for customers, particularly men who barely know more than 4 or 5 colours to make a more accurate selection of their preferred home interior colour scheme.

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