Interactive Digital Display

RotaCota Interactive Digital Display

Problem. Solution. Design. Delivery.

Rota Cota is a heritage trade brand in Paint Accessories and a manufacturer of premium trade brushes, rollers, and painting accessories for more than 40 years in Australia. The Rota Cota name falls under the Dulux Group’s range of iconic brands servicing the Australian and New Zealand markets including Selleys, British Paints, and Cabot’s.

Rota Cota has recently released a new range of paint brushes. The ‘Calibre’ range of products use the latest innovative brush technology, positioning them as the foremost option for professional painters looking for the perfect finish. The new suite of Calibre paint brushes will be stocked in all the major trades-servicing stores such as Inspirations Paint.

Understanding the Challenge

Years of experience, innovation, and product iterations have been drawn upon in the design and manufacture of Rota Cota’s Calibre Paint Brush range. The brands’ next challenge is executing their go-to-market. Communicating the product benefits to their target market is crucial in convincing professional painters to upgrade their equipment and perhaps shift to the Rota Cota brand. Brand loyalty tends to be unwavering amongst tradespeople, when they find products that work for them, they tend to stick with these for a long time. For this reason, a brand like Rota Cota cannot expect instant sales success when they release a new product to the market. The marketing of said product can prove just as important as the product’s attributes.

So with that considered, Rota Cota have looked to support their innovative product with some innovative marketing to promote the Calibre range in stores. Part of this strategy involved installing interactive digital displays to attract the attention of painters shopping for equipment. For this, they enlisted the help of Black Lab Design for the design, manufacture, programming and install of the interactive digital displays. The Rota Cota team knew that Black Lab would be able to handle every step of this build, minimising the number of parties required to deliver a final working solution.

Designing the Solution

Boasting an experienced mix of industrial design, fabrication, and IT talent under one roof, Black Lab Design had the know-how to make sure an interactive digital display that met Rota Cota’s vision was delivered.

Close collaboration between the client and Black Lab Design is a staple of every project we take on. For us, collaboration means we can truly understand the problem our client faces and envision their desired outcome. For the client, it means they have full visibility at every step of the process.

The first step in the Rota Cota build was to send the client a suite of design concepts. All design concepts are created with manufacturability at top of mind. Throughout the design process we are optimising material usage, functionality and product aesthetic. It’s important to us and to our customers that the final delivered product always looks exactly as it did in the client’s selected concept render.

There were a number of elements involved with the Rota Cota Display that needed to be fulfilled. It needed to be low profile to comfortably fit into a busy store, whilst still commanding attention. The unit also needed to clearly communicate its purpose and it had to securely house a functioning interactive digital display.

Delivering the Result

With confirmation of a preferred design, material and interactive functionality, Black Lab Design went ahead with production. The unit body, as shown in the adjoined images, resembles a modern lectern, with a sleek and tapered lower section arising from a secure base plate with minimal footprint. The unit needed to house a 24 inch screen, media player and necessary components for power and wiring – this was achieved with some clever space optimisation and consideration of airflow, heat and damage-proofing.

The unit stands a little over 940mm tall, and a total of 1300mm with the header sign attached. It’s constructed from a mix of hot-rolled steel and zincanneal, and finished with a clean white powder coat. Branding elements, such as the die-cut stickers on the unit body and the printed header card, were also completed in-house at Black Lab’s digital printing facility.

The interactive functionality of the digital touch screen was executed by our IT team. The interactive display is programmed to allow users to ‘paint’ the screen using a Rota Cota brush which then activates a chance-to-win game.

The customer was suitably impressed with the final result and so far it has proved an effective in-store marketing tool. The time from brief to install was just a matter of weeks, demonstrating a best-in-class ability to design and manufacture a high-quality, digitally integrated item in a competitively short lead time.