According to Duplo’s UK marketing manager Sarah Crumpler, The Duplo Owners Club scheme was born out of customer feedback.

“It’s a new way of shaping how we communicate with our customers and will include a rethink on things ranging from welcome packs, surveys and email communications,” said Crumpler.

“We want to make sure we have regular points of contact with our customers and they have the sense that they’re part of something important and we’re not just delivering technology and then running off.”

One of the key elements of the owners’ club will be independent customer forums.
The inaugural forum, which will take place at 3pm on the first day of the Northern Lights event, will focus on Duplo’s range of multi-finishers, from the DC-616 through to the DC-745.

The idea behind the forums is for customers to share best practice based on their own experiences of using Duplo kit and also highlight any issues they may have.

The session will be independently chaired by Prime Group operations director Adrian Tolley, who will feed back to Duplo.

“There won’t be any Duplo staff present, it’s just a chance for owners to get together and discuss issues they might be having, or talk about product developments they might want in the future, or simply discuss things they might not want to talk to us directly about,” said Crumpler.

Future forums will cover areas such as bookletmakers, R&D, service.

Operator Focus will be another feature at the Manchester event, which according to Crumpler is Duplo’s take on the Apple 'Genius Bar' model, where operators can come along to Northern Lights and ask specific questions on running the products or just top up their training.

“We’ll have machines at the show that are particularly popular in the part of the country, and we’ll have a our customer trainers and product specialists running sessions on them every hour on the hour to show some tips and tricks,” said Crumpler.

The kit featured in the Operator Focus sessions will be the DC-645 multi-finisher and the System 500i bookletmaker.

In the past few days Duplo has also signed up two new partners for the event, with colour specialists GMG Color and MIS developer Tharstern signing up to appear at the event. Other partners include Balreed, Infigo Software, Lumejet,  Paperlinx, Renz and Vivid.

Northern Lights takes place on the 10 and 11 March at The Lowry, Salford Quays, Manchester. For more information, visit www.duplonorthernlights.com.