Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Pen­ta colour shops have been re­brand­ed and are now the Pen­ta Colour Stu­dios.A mem­ber of the ANSA Group for the past 35 years, Pen­ta re­brand­ing is be­ing hailed as the dawn of a new era in the re­tail­ing of paints and coat­ings.This ac­cord­ing to ANSA Coat­ings Ltd's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Roger Roach, who was speak­ing at the launch of the Mara­bel­la Colour Stu­dio, Union Road, Mara­bel­la.

"You are wit­ness­ing the dawn of a new era in the re­tail­ing of paints and coat­ings that will unique­ly po­si­tion this store and oth­ers to come at the fore­front of the in­dus­try," said Roach. "The aim is to bring them to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard in terms of look, feel and ser­vice lev­el, while main­tain­ing the vi­bran­cy and flair of the Caribbean."

Roach said a ma­jor fea­ture of the Colour Stu­dio is the Pen­ta In­no­v­a­tive Artistry, which al­lows cus­tomers bring in pic­tures of their homes and be able to get a pre­view of their homes in dif­fer­ent colours be­fore fi­nal­ly choos­ing which paints they want to pur­chase.

"You bring pic­tures of your prop­er­ty or room on a flash dri­ve. We up­load it to the sys­tem and pro­vide a pic­to­r­i­al view of dif­fer­ent colour schemes that match your taste and ac­ces­sories, so you can blend, con­trast, ac­cent, tex­ture, pat­tern or sim­ply re­fresh, be­fore you choose your colour."

He said the Mara­bel­la store, which has been in ex­is­tence for 40 years, is in an ide­al lo­ca­tion to pro­vide ser­vices main­te­nance con­trac­tors who op­er­ate in the en­er­gy belt with on­shore and off­shore as­sets. "This Mara­bel­la lo­ca­tion was es­tab­lished as a dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre since the days of ICI Paints and it has catered to a wide cross-sec­tion of cus­tomers in the south and cen­tral, in­clud­ing con­trac­tors, prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ers and some hard­wares."

Roach promised the re­brand­ing of four more colour shops by the end of this Sep­tem­ber, along with the in­tro­duc­tion of new prod­ucts."Be­fore the end of Sep­tem­ber, we will in­tro­duce a num­ber of prod­ucts, in­clud­ing ap­pli­ance epoxy, Zinss­er pool paint, and we will be test­ing the mar­ket for Ma­rine Top­side Paint."

Speak­ing to the Guardian af­ter the launch, Sean de Souza, sales and mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Pen­ta Paints, said the Colour Stu­dio con­tains erect­ed fur­nished mod­el rooms, which in­clude a child's room, a bed­room and a liv­ing-room.

"Many cus­tomers will see cer­tain colours and want them, but are not sure how to de­sign their spaces once they have bought it," said De Souza. "These spaces will pro­vide the in­spi­ra­tion they need." Al­so ad­dress­ing the guests, Ju­nia Re­grel­lo, deputy may­or of San Fer­nan­do, praised ANSA Coat­ings for the re­brand­ing ef­fort.