You can probably tell by my picture, but it's worth saying anyway that I've been in this game a long time now.

While I've been writing about kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms for nearly ten years, I've also covered various other industries, including hospitality, property and even meat - you haven't truly

arrived as a journo until you've written a story on the price of liver, believe me. 

Anyway, one issue that comes up time and again across so many sectors is the 'critical skills shortage'. It is always a topic that everyone has an opinion on, and they usually come in one of three manifestations: 

1. How do we get young people into our industry? 

2. Why isn't there more training available? 

3. Why aren't there more formal qualifications to weed out the unskilled?

All these questions are asked across most areas of business and the KBB industry is no different. For this sector, all three are very valid, very relevant and, therefore, very difficult to answer satisfactorily. 

Because of this difficulty, many tend to focus on the word 'training' as an easy catch-all - "you know what this industry needs? More training that's what, there's not enough training." 

But what does it actually mean on the day-to-day shopfloor? The truth is that there’s plenty of ‘training’ in this industry but it usually comes in the form of product guidance organised and

paid for by the manufacturer. The end result of this training is that the attendee can be more knowledgeable in front of the consumer and therefore are more likely to make a sale. 

This is training, not education, and I suspect that’s what people really mean. People who are good at their jobs like formal recognition of their skills as it sets them apart from those that don’t

have it – but there is no system of education in this industry and I would debate whether it really actually needs one. 

By that I mean that mandatory education and qualifications in the industries that have them are primarily driven by legislation – in other words you cannot practice in that profession without

those qualifications. But once you step outside of the installation aspect of the KBB world, where’s the incentive for legislation? 

The only motivation you’re left with is the desire to make more sales which brings us back to the manufacturer product training, of which there is plenty.

Professional education sounds great in principle but in practice it’s time consuming and expensive to undertake if you’re a ‘student’ and an almost logistically impossible and hugely expensive

task to set up if you’re the ‘school’. 

The KBB National Training Group was established precisely as an attempt to answer the ‘this industry needs more training’ desk thump, however it has struggled to create any real momentum

because the industry ultimately didn’t really know what training it wanted and hasn’t got behind the NTG enough to give it the resources to find out. 

And who exactly is ‘the industry’ anyway? 

So what ‘training’ do you need? Is it all about product sales? Should there be a formal series of qualifications for designers that apply regardless of whose products you’re selling? 

Would you pay to get those qualifications even if you’ve been doing the job for 20 years? 

Or is your ‘training’ more informal than that and if you decide you need some help keeping on top of your accounts, or getting the most out of IT, you simply get yourselves down to the local evening classes and sort it out?

Or is the KBB retail industry simply not suited to formality and, at the end of the day, there’s only one way to learn and that’s on the job. 

What do you think? Email the editor direct andrew@kbbreview.com