ArtiCAD RoomPlanner huge success for Victor Paris

Victor Paris is one of the country’s leading bathroom and tile specialists. The family-owned and run company typically has some 200 different bathrooms on display at its flagship store and currently uses BathCAD throughout its showrooms  in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee.

Prior to investing in BathCAD, an alternative design system was abandoned because of the length of time it took to generate 3D rendered images.

In April 2009, Victor Paris selected Bath CAD from ArtiCAD. Designer, Ross Penman: “BathCAD was the obvious choice for Victor Paris. We were attracted by its ease of use and the speed with which it could produce both plans and 3D designs.”

Ross is a member of a team of fifteen sales people across the three showrooms. He now typically produces some fifty designs each week using BathCAD. A layout takes about ten minutes and is produced whilst the customer watches. “The 3D designs and plans are not only much faster to produce, but are also a lot more professional.

“Customers can be completely confident that the design they choose will be an exact representation of their finished room. Any queries can be resolved immediately with BathCAD, which in turn makes it even easier for us to sell.”

The company then took the decision to install ArtiCAD’s online room planner on their web site – and the results have been dramatic and impressive – and “better than we had ever expected”, according to Ross Penman (Sales Manager – Edinburgh) at Victor Paris.

ArtiCAD Room Planner is a simple yet powerful 2D online room planner specifically designed for the KBB industry, which can be used in a variety of ways according to the needs of individual businesses. In the case of Victor Paris, it is used to attract qualified sales leads by enabling visitors to the site to input room plans for their specific requirements. Customers are then contacted to arrange an appointment at one of the company’s showrooms to go through their new room plan in more detail and receive a comprehensive design and quotation.

Victor Paris installed ArtiCAD Room Planner and was almost immediately overwhelmed with requests for designs. Ross Penman: “Initially we had the system set up such that when we received a room plan, we would reply with a detailed design, produced in BathCAD. However, we were receiving at least twenty plans via ArtiCAD Room Planner most days and it was impossible to keep up with the demand. Very quickly we changed the way it worked by contacting customers to make an appointment once we had received their initial plan, and then producing the detailed design following that meeting.”

This approach has worked very well, and the conversion rate for those submitting an initial plan and then taking up the offer of an appointment is “really high”.

“We didn’t think the system would be used anything like as much as it is. In our first year, we received 432 standard web enquiries and 677 via ArtiCAD Room Planner. We typically have about 150-200 unique visitors to our web site each day. The quality of the plans provided by prospective customers is good which means that they are finding the system simple and quick to use. This in turn is helping us to design and quote more quickly, and to sell more bathrooms.”

According to Ross, ArtiCAD Room Planner has also increased the footfall in the showroom as people come for their appointments and has encouraged customers to continue to build their relationship with Victor Paris rather than looking for alternative suppliers.