Dulux Weathershield Backpack Roller
The Weathershield BackPack Roller System allows you to paint the exterior of your home with the same ease, speed and cleanliness that PaintPod brought to the interior.
It is an ultra portable, battery-powered pump that you can wear in its special rucksack. With the supplied (AA) batteries, you can paint up to 15 litres of paint without ever once dipping a roller into a paint tray. The system is supplied with a rucksack, while an extension pole and an edging kit worn on a belt are sold separately – all very useful when you are at the top of a ladder.
The core technology is the combination of a new formulation of paint, the novel pumping system, wireless control systems and a new roller design. All are packaged to create a solution in which exterior walls, even those that have been pebble dashed, can be painted quickly, cleanly and safely.
Laura Knight, Innovation Manager at ICI Paints AkzoNobel commented: “Our insight was that most of our consumers find painting the exterior of their homes daunting, which is putting them off doing the task. Their concerns mostly revolve around the scale of the project and the worry of climbing ladders while holding painting materials. With the Dulux Weathershield BackPack Roller System we targeted these concerns directly: By putting the paint into a rucksack and delivering it straight to the roller and onto the wall, our consumers can now apply paint more quickly, the project is completed in a shorter time and is therefore less daunting. But most importantly, our valuable consumers always have a spare hand for the ladder. By making it safer, we believe that consumers will feel empowered to paint their homes themselves. By making it easier, they are likely to repaint more often. The introduction of this Product System has therefore given us a significant competitive advantage in our market niche.”
CDP’s integrated engineering and design team were able to build on their experience of creating PaintPod, and deliver a market-ready product system to Dulux a mere months after the initial brief, designing not just the pump but also the rucksack, roller and complete range of accesories.
Skills Deployed
• User research
• Industrial design
• Mechanical engineering
• Ergonomic study
• Project management