The Future Tradie Report is Australia’s first foresight report shining a light on emerging residential trade small businesses. It unpacks their behaviours, beliefs and what they need to succeed.
The challenge
As Next worked within the Reece to improve the service experience for tradies, a recurring challenge emerged: an emerging generation of trades business leaders was transforming their approach how they run their business, how they interact with other businesses, and what they offer their customers.
This demanded a deeper understanding of these ‘Future Tradies’ to shine a light on how trades businesses can adapt and thrive in a changing landscape.
Our approach
Collaborating closely with Trout, we embarked on a comprehensive research initiative—the Future Tradie Report. This involved conducting in-depth interviews with small business trailblazers and industry experts, as well as administering the largest national survey of it’s kind in Australia thanks to the help of our corporate partners Reece, Dulux, Middy’s, HazardCo, Bluescope, CSR and Buildxac.
The result
The program culminated in teams presenting their concepts to senior leaders from across the business. Next continues to work with teams on select ideas to further experiment and grow their prototypes, helping to build business cases to bring the ideas to life.
1071
Tradies Surveyed
13
Tradies interviewed in-depth
5
Year horizon
Outcomes
The Future Tradie Report
The creation of The Future Tradie Report, available in both printed and downloadable formats, along with a dedicated comprehensive, multimedia website, detailing the forces, mindsets, and themes driving the Future Tradie, while highlighting opportunities arising in the trades sector.
Emerging tradie leadership behaviours
Through our research, we gained detailed insights into the evolving mindset and behaviours of emerging tradie leaders, enabling us and our partners to better anticipate and adapt to future trends.
Digital experience with authentic content
Our digital platform offers an immersive experience, featuring authentic audio and video content from industry leaders. This enriches understanding of key themes and facilitates deeper engagement with the research findings.
Validated insights
A national survey involving over 1,000 tradies ensured the validation and credibility of our findings. Collaboration with our corporate partners such as Reece, Dulux, and Bluescope leveraged industry-wide participation to solidify the project's impact and relevance.
Outcomes
The Future Tradie Report
The creation of The Future Tradie Report, available in both printed and downloadable formats, along with a dedicated comprehensive, multimedia website, detailing the forces, mindsets, and themes driving the Future Tradie, while highlighting opportunities arising in the trades sector.
Emerging tradie leadership behaviours
Through our research, we gained detailed insights into the evolving mindset and behaviours of emerging tradie leaders, enabling us and our partners to better anticipate and adapt to future trends.
Digital experience with authentic content
Our digital platform offers an immersive experience, featuring authentic audio and video content from industry leaders. This enriches understanding of key themes and facilitates deeper engagement with the research findings.
Validated insights
A national survey involving over 1,000 tradies ensured the validation and credibility of our findings. Collaboration with our corporate partners such as Reece, Dulux, and Bluescope leveraged industry-wide participation to solidify the project's impact and relevance.