How to make your deck shine for the Arbordeck Awards

We’re delighted to be bringing back the Arbordeck Awards this year, and as submissions start to ramp up, we’re sharing some top tips for creating a successful entry – and who better to give advice than 2018 Best of Trex winner, North Spas?

Here, North Spas’ managing director Davy Mason shares his top five things to consider for your Arbordeck Awards entry.

I’d highly recommend any decking business to enter the Arbordeck Awards – it’s the perfect opportunity to demonstrate your Trex® Pro skills to customers through resulting coverage. We firmly believe that our success at the Awards last year is the reason we’re experiencing our busiest season yet! But what helped us take the title of Best of Trex with our Peffer Project?

Use beautiful photos

When deciding which project to enter my advice would be to book an hour in your diary to grab a coffee and look at photos of your recent installations, and how many likes and shares each project has received on social media – this is a great way to gauge how impressive they are, and from there you can create a shortlist of projects to enter. Remember that there are a variety of categories to enter, so you don’t just need to focus on your bigger projects – we also won the Best Small Deck category with our ‘Trex around the Pond’ deck!

Make sure that the photos you use are high-quality, as well as visually attractive. We’ve found that photos with deck lights taken in the early evening are popular as they look so striking.

Focus on creativity

There are so many fantastic designs from Trex Pros, like the guitar-shaped deck from Hen House Decks, which gave us decking envy for weeks! This means you need to choose creative decks to stand out from the other entries.

The more imagination that’s gone into a deck, the better. So if you’ve created a deck with a unique design, shape or pattern, it’s definitely worth entering it into the Arbordeck Awards.

Be descriptive

It’s so important to be descriptive in your entry for the chance to take the title. Tell the judges exactly what you did to create the deck – if, for example, you curved a board with a CustomCurve™ oven then tell the judges. It’s a real skill to curve boards, so make sure you shout about it!

You should also add your quote into the entry, including all of the dimensions, special features and colours. We referred to our quote throughout our entry, and the fact that we keep drawings of our designs really helped us to describe the deck.

Tell the story

Our winning deck, belonging to Mr and Mrs Peffer, is both visually stunning and practical to the couple’s needs. In our entry, we explained how they invested in their health by purchasing a hot tub to soothe their muscles, which was sunk into the bed of Trex Transcend in Island Mist so they could enter it with ease. The design allows Mr and Mrs Peffer to reap the benefits of hydrotherapy, whilst allowing them to admire their luscious green garden thanks to the stainless steel and glass balustrade combination we added to the deck.

Our Peffer project’s strong story made it stand out to the judges because it brought to light the human element of decking installation. There’s a family behind every deck, and they’ve chosen your company and Trex for a reason – so don’t forget to ask your customer what their reasons are, and include this in your entry. It’s a good idea to ask the customer for the top three reasons they love their deck, as great feedback never goes amiss!

As well as telling the customer story, it’s also worth including your own story behind the deck. Not all decking projects are smooth sailing, and there’s nothing wrong with explaining the hurdles you overcame to install the deck.

Show your passion

At North Spas, we’re passionate about the designs we create, the installations we complete and the customer care we give.

Success is built on your passion for what you do, so make sure you demonstrate this in your entry. It can often be measured through customer feedback, so if you received a great testimonial from your customer, make sure you include this in your entry for the judges to see.

You can apply for the Arbordeck Awards here until 27th September 2019, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with all the latest Arbordeck news.