I think something should be done about it, don’t you?

Everyone is into nature now.

Pool covers. That’s what I was talking about. Wasn’t it obvious?

As we all know, a good modern pool cover can go a long way to making a pool more environmentally friendly and energy efficient.

But do all of your customers know that? Do they know how much the design and technology of pool covers has moved on over the past few years? Do they know that it’s quite easy to fit a new cover to an existing pool and that it may well make a lot of sense to replace an old cover with a new one.

And that set me off thinking along a couple of lines.

There’s something healthy and natural about swimming but sadly, many pools aren’t all that environmentally friendly and that is particularly true for the older existing pools.

But there is a wide range of products that can be retro-fitted to those pools that will make them ‘greener’.

There are about 215,000 private pools in the UK and many of those are getting on in years now. That is a pretty big market. It keeps the chemicals and service side of our industry busy but there are other ways that we can tap into it as well.

Certainly, I am more environmentally aware than I used to be, and I think that’s true for many of those pool owners too.

I’ve seen a rise in the cost of electricity and oil and so I am keen to be as energy efficient as I can. I’m sure they feel the same.

Of course, it is possible to retrofit products to an existing pool that can make it more energy efficient and therefore cheaper to run. It is also possible to reduce the amount of chemicals that are used and the amount of water that needs to go through the pool in a season also by installing retrofit products.

So we decided that we should bring those products together and produce something that would help you sell them to your customers.

The Golden Coast retrofit brochure. ‘Ideas and inspiration for improving your pool.’

We have put together a glossy, full-colour brochure that includes pool covers, the MultiCyclone pre-filter unit, solar heating, heat pumps and LED lighting.

All of these products are relatively easy to install into an existing pool, they all make the pool more eco-friendly and energy efficient.

In today’s market, they should almost sell themselves, but a little help will do no harm.

The brochure is designed to catch your customer’s eye and get them thinking about how they might make their pool cheaper and ‘greener’ to run.

It includes products that can save them time on pool maintenance, like automatic pool cleaners and chemical dosing systems as well as a section on water features and counter current units that can be retro-fitted just to add to the fun and enjoyment they get from their pool.

A copy of that brochure should be with you in the next day or so and you can see the opportunity for yourself.

‘And now the long-range forecast…’

I for one believe we are due for a good summer.

The first few months of the year have been cold, but they have been dry.

Today the sun is out and the sky is blue. I have seen some swallows although I don’t know how many actually are ‘enough’.

I hope it will be a good summer, I want it to be a good summer and we deserve a good summer. But what if we actually get one!

‘Be careful what you wish for,’ the old saying goes. ‘Because you might get it.’

If we do actually get a hot summer, then I think the demand will be immense. People will rush to open their pools. Pools that weren’t opened last year may well need more work than normal. People won’t want to miss a single, good day.

If that peak demand comes, do you have a plan? Do you think that you would be able to cope?

I hope that we are not all so used to planning how to weather the storm that we aren’t able to get the most out of some good fortune when it arrives, as I am sure it will.

Finally, from the weather to the web.

So we have touched on good ideas, hopefully a good forecast and now some good news.

Our consumer-focussed sites, Your Pool, Your Spa and Your Sauna have been getting increasing traffic over the past twelve months and, as more and more articles appear on them, they have moved up in the search engine listings.

We have now noticed an increase in the number of leads and enquiries that they are generating.

The idea was always to inform the public of the benefits of those three sectors of the wet leisure industry; to sell those benefits and hopefully persuade them to invest in their own sauna, spa or pool.

The idea was also to use the sites to generate quality leads from people actually searching for information about wet leisure products and pass those leads on to an appropriate Golden Coast account customer.

Golden Coast account customers can sponsor an article on any one of the sites, that is their name, logo and contact details appear alongside the article. That ‘sponsorship’ costs you nothing, just get in touch and we can get the process started.

We have started carrying adverts on the ‘Your’ sites for some of our account customers and we have started a link-building program where you can link from your website directly to one or all of those sites thus giving your own website visitors direct access to hundreds of articles that promote pools, saunas and spas.

If you would be interested in a reciprocal link, then once again, please just contact us.

All the best for the season ahead and if you have any thoughts you’d like to share about any issues raised in this newsletter then please feel free to call or use the comment box below.

As no two contracts are ever the same, we will build panels to suit the specific requirements of each installation including a small domestic pool to a large commercial facility with multiple bodies of water requiring control of standard equipment enhanced with specialist features and applications.

Have it your way

Housed within an IP65 rated enclosure including an outer vision panel and inner door, a basic panel will feature individual switches for filter pumps, booster pumps, blowers and lights with a time clock for the filtration.

As nothing is too big, our ‘in-house’ electro mechanical engineers will either adapt a ‘standard’ product to meet your exact requirements, or start with a clean sheet and work with you to meet your precise specification and needs.

Panels can feature a range of specialist options including:

• Automatic chemical control using an Etatron AG-Select R module.

• Remote control of booster pumps and blowers using a range of button options including LED or touchpads containing two or three buttons.

• Wireless control for installations with awkward access, using radio remote control systems.

• Standard or economy heat mode for spas.

The options available are almost endless and governed only by your needs and the complexity of the contract – just ask us and we will find a solution.

View the brochure

Your in control with your logo

To complete the customisation process we will also remove our branding and include your logo and contact details on the front of the panel to reflect the professional image your company.

To find out more or for a quote, call the sales office on 01271 378100 or send us an e-mail  swimmer@goldenc.com

The UK manufacturer known worldwide as an innovative manufacturer of precision engineered products for leisure and industrial water treatment applications, now exports to 100 International markets in every continent. Triogen’s comprehensive range of water treatment systems utilizes patented design and advanced technology to provide products with optimum reliability and safety, combined with high performance and low energy consumption.

High quality reputation

Triogen values its international reputation as a supplier supply of high quality ozone and UV systems. Supplying many preeminent companies worldwide, Triogen maintains a very close relationship with its partners & customers to ensure they offer premium products and service to meet the highest water treatment quality requirements.

The move in appointing its first ever UK distributor, Golden Coast will offer additional coverage of Triogens complete range of water treatment systems for both private and commercial swimming pools these include the new TR2 low pressure UV systems for domestic pools, T2/T4/T8 Ozone systems and their latest medium pressure Cross Flow UV systems for commercial pools.

Whilst systems and complete technical and after-sales service will continue to be available through Triogen the close working agreement aims for a long term partnership in the supply of Triogen systems to the UK wet leisure market. “Triogen have taken great care in selecting its first UK distributing partner” says Alastair Crawford, Sales Manager at Triogen. “We pride ourselves in offering the UK market with not only the best quality water treatment systems, but an open doors approach to our customers in providing the best technical advice and service.

Whilst a complete and extensive training program has begun with our new partner Golden Coast, Triogen will continue its commitment to every customer in providing complete technical support and after-sales services”

A world class act

Alastair continues “It is a time of great advancement at Triogen. Our existing range of ozone systems continue to lead the market and the response to our latest TR2 UV and UVARAY Crossflow systems has been exceptional. This agreement will not only further improve the service Triogen customers receive and offer easier, wider access to Triogen systems but will allow more investment into our product development. This will assist us in reinforcing our position as a worldwide leader in the manufacture of precision engineered water treatment systems.”

For further information on Triogen systems, stock availability or training, please call us 01271 378100 or send an e-mail

It was something I picked up while walking around the show and I’ve brought back home with me.

The best thing that SPATEX 2013 exhibited was a feeling of confidence.

Every show will leave you with particular memories; a great new product or an important new contact.

But they also leave you with something else; they leave you with a ‘general impression’ and that can sometimes be the most important thing.

Yes, it would have been nice if Brighton had more attendees, but the impression that I got from the people who were there was a positive one. Last year people were hoping that 2012 was going to be a better year, hoping for a better summer and a better business climate.

This year a lot of the people I spoke to were talking about work and projects that they already had lined up, new leads to be followed up on and new business to quote for.

And that was good to hear. It really was.

Recessions are all about ‘credit crunch’ and ‘money supply’ and all those other hard-to-understand economic things but they are also about confidence – or rather a lack of it; business confidence and consumer confidence.

And as we all know, confidence is sometimes easy to loose and takes a long time to build back up.

I’m not suggesting that we are out of the woods yet, but there are certainly signs that things are getting better. What are we all going to do to make the most of it?

Of course, we didn’t just take things away from SPATEX, we took some stuff with us too and one of those boxes contained a few hundred copies of our Wet Leisure Industry Survey 2013 Results document.

Have you read it yet?

“Well done for putting together this initiative I look forward to reading the results and seeing how my views compare with others in the industry.”

That quote is at the back of the 2013 Survey Results document and, as luck would have it, it pretty much sums up the feedback that we received on handing copies out.

There was an increase of over 40% in the number of businesses who responded to the survey questionnaires this year and that makes the results that bit more meaningful, the picture they paint that bit more detailed.

I won’t spoil the story by giving away too many details here. Why don’t you download the Wet Leisure Industry Survey 2013 Results and see for yourself what the industry is saying, but I will share one surprise.

The levels of business confidence reported in the survey from all sectors – pool, spa and sauna – aren’t that high but the reported sales figures are up on last year.

And that takes us back to the truth about business confidence that I touched on earlier. Things have to be better for a little while before people believe that they are better and might actually stay better.

But that doesn’t mean we can relax.

“Issues that have challenged us for the past few years are likely to stay a while longer. We will have to modify the way we do business to survive and develop into the future.”

That quote is on the back cover of the document and I believe it makes a very important point.

Tough times force people to change, to shake off old habits and look harder at what they do and how they do it.

Which brings me to my next point.

Its time to come in to the warm.

One of the industry wide changes that the survey pointed to was that more and more businesses are extending the sectors that they do business in.

That is, people aren’t just selling pools or limiting themselves to spas, they are active in all areas of the wet leisure industry and that means that more people are offering saunas to their customers.

In fact, sauna was one of the most talked about product lines at SPATEX.

The sauna industry is one that has seen a lot of changes over recent years and it is quite likely that, unless you are involved with saunas, you might have an out-of-date view of the modern sauna.

Infra-red saunas started the change a few years ago but a little more recently, saunas have really caught up with consumers’ lifestyles and demands.

The modern sauna is a good-looking piece of bathroom furniture, it might include steam and it might run at a lower, softer temperature than the Finnish sauna of old. Saunas have become more feminine, and we all know who holds the purse strings in so many houses and families.

Because of these changes in the market and the potential for growth that we see here, we have written and produced a Sauna eBook that is available for you to download for free and that includes pretty much everything you would need to know to see if expanding into the sauna market might be right for your business.

And while we are on the subject of change…

In February this year, we – Golden Coast – brought our relationship with Marquis Spas to an end and became the UK distributor of Sundance Spas.

Change isn’t easy.

We had had a long and happy relationship with Marquis Spas, we’d made some good friends there and we shall have some good memories.

Sometimes change is the right thing to do.

Sundance Spas had a good name in our industry and rightly so. In the last few years they haven’t been resting on their laurels, they have been innovating and keeping their well deserved place as the premium brand for people who realise the importance of investing in health, relaxation and hydrotherapy.

Sundance hold 33 patents in the US relating to hot tub technology from jets to waterfalls.

Their product and positioning is right for this market now and we are looking forward to a bright and successful future with them.

A new season will soon begin.

The first day of Spring is March 20th. Judging by the forecast, I think we’ll see a pretty chilly start to the new season, but Spring it will be all the same.

Its time to get going with the year ahead; put your plans into action.

As you know, there is a wealth of articles containing tips and advice on all aspects of marketing and business planning on WetLeisure.co and, as you know, you are always welcome to phone us at Golden Coast for any specific advice or support we can give you.

All the best for the year ahead and if you have any thoughts you’d like to share about any issues raised in this newsletter then please use the comment box below.

Supplied in a handy water proof box the kit includes; one colour changing Moonlight LED light, Transformer, Control Switch, RCD Plug & 11Metres of Cable. All for just £225 nett.

You can see the kit in use on this You Tube Video where it gets demonstrated 1 minute and 8 seconds from the start

With one of these kits you or your engineers can instantly transform the atmosphere of a customer’s pool and display the variety of magical colours, and rhythmic colour changes available with Spectravision.

For pools with an existing standard deck box, transformer and niche, installation is quick and easy allowing you to offer a fixed price for the installation.

To order your Spectravision Pool Side Display; call the sales office on 01271 378100 send us an e-mail  orders@goldenc.com or visit our trade web shop

If you can sell pools, you can sell saunas.

This is one of the key messages to pool companies from Golden Coast, Britain’s largest independent distributor of wet leisure products to the trade, which has put together a whole package of resources to help their businesses grow.

“Our motivation is quite simple,” says Golden Coast’s Managing Director Jamie Adams. “The success of Golden Coast depends on the success of our customers – so we need to do everything we possibly can to make them prosper.”

In particular, Golden Coast is encouraging them to expand into the sauna market. After all, the skills, equipment and facilities needed to sell, install and maintain saunas are very similar to those needed for pools and hot tubs. What’s more, there is a huge overlap in the customer base. In other words, the most obvious buyers of saunas are the pool companies’ existing customers.

Golden Coast knows a thing or two about the sauna business, having enjoyed a 30-year relationship with Swedish company Tylö – one of the most prestigious names in the sauna industry. Tylö’s reputation for reliability and quality, together with Golden Coast’s advice and support, should give businesses working with them an immediate head start.

Free e-books

A very convincing case for this business opportunity is given in a free e-book, downloadable from the Golden Coast website golden.co. The figures speak for themselves. Mr Adams explains: “Sauna business in this country has been is increasing by 10% per annum over the last decade. A company with its own showroom, working as an authorised Tylö dealer and using the recommended SRP, will make a substantial gross profit on each sauna sale – and customers will expect to pay between £2,500 and £25,000 a time.”

As well as explaining why expansion into the sauna market is a good idea, the e-book also gives clear guidance on how to make a success of it. In another free e-book, again downloadable from goldenc.co, Golden Coast gives businesses a step-by-step guide to increasing the effectiveness of their marketing. The same principles can be applied to pools, saunas and any other product or service. Avoiding marketing jargon, this comprehensive ‘how to’ guide is presented clearly and directly to companies working in the wet leisure industry.

One of the lessons Golden Coast has learned through 35 years in wet leisure is that customers are much more likely to buy if they can look, touch and feel. With this in mind, it has put together a very effective Tylö ‘virtual’ sauna display which gives a real flavour of the sauna experience without taking up valuable showroom space.

The attractively priced display is 2.3 metres high and just 1.5 or 2.0 metres wide – depending on whether the single unit with one mounted poster or the double with two posters is chosen. The kit contains everything you need to set the sauna scene, from the shelving and furnishings to the heater, sauna stones, buckets and ladles, hourglass and a collection of essential oils.

“Whatever you do, now is not the time to stand still,” warns Jamie Adams. “But while there are many possibilities for diversification, if you move into areas only loosely associated with your core business you may damage your image as a wet leisure specialist. That’s why the sauna market, which is such a good fit with the pool business, is the ideal direction in which to expand.”

We are all in this industry together and the more information on the true size of our market and what lies ahead, the easier it will be for all of us to plan accordingly.

Last year’s Wet Leisure Survey was a great success and started to build that overall picture of the industry that has been sadly lacking for so long.

This year we conducted the survey once again and so, as we build data year on year, it becomes possible to track changes and trends in the industry that we can all use to help us with our business planning.

You can download the results of the survey here

Business is hard; we have to think hard when planning to make the best of it.

“The difference between try and triumph is a little umph”

I found the above while looking for quotes for 2013 on the web. I laughed at first, and then I didn’t.

I’m sure that if the ability to ‘keep calm’ and put in a little effort was all it took for a business to succeed, everyone in the wet leisure industry would be rich.

But business is hard.

To succeed in 2013 will take tough decisions and realistic planning. The economic outlook is not exactly full of sunshine – there is more detail on that here – and the weather forecast is, of course, a complete mystery.

Doing a good, solid and realistic business plan for 2013 is probably the best, first action you can take. Whatever area of the wet leisure industry you are in, your business is basically about cash in vs. cash out.

Turnover is only worthwhile if you are extracting enough profit from it.

As some margins get squeezed, it’s easy to look at a sale and think, ‘Well, at least I’m making a few quid out of it’. But that profit margin has to contribute to all of your costs and overheads. A business plan will let you see more clearly which areas of your business are valid and whether some simply aren’t.

Of course, you can help matters by reducing your overheads, but after two years of austerity is there really that much more to cut?

It is always worth doing some price comparisons on utilities as the energy and telecoms companies are feeling the pinch too and there are deals to be made and lower tariffs to look for.

For business planning for the year ahead in a bit more detail, follow this link.

But when all is said and done, cutting costs will only get you so far and if that is the only road you go down it is almost forced to end with, one day, turning out the lights and shutting the door for the last time.

And no one wants that to happen, do they?

Don’t keep calm; take control. Don’t carry on; do something different.

Planning for the year ahead needs to have a positive side as well.

It needs to be about finding better customers, offering better products and making better margins.

The world has changed – and is changing – and it isn’t all about crisis and recession. There is money to be made and business to be done but it might not be found in the old, familiar places by methods that you think of as tried and trusted.

Positively the most important part of your business planning for 2013 will be your marketing strategy.

In tough times, people think and behave differently.

Will people be looking to invest in their health and wellbeing or indulge in a luxurious lifestyle? Sales messages targeted at either of these consumer attitudes could lead to a hot tub sale, but which do you think will get the attention of the biggest audience today?

Money spent on marketing isn’t a cost, it’s an investment; but like all investing it needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully.

Putting all your eggs into one basket isn’t likely to pay off. If you spread your money too thinly, you might not get seen.

The way to make these tricky decisions is to have a good, sound strategy. A marketing strategy defines where you want your business to be in the market and what sort of customers you want to attract.

There are a host of articles on marketing on Wetleisure.com but you might want to start with this one, which is on how to come up with a marketing plan.

Deciding what to sell is as important as deciding how to sell it.

There are innovative new products on the market.

Manufacturers are operating in the same economic environment as you are and they are just as keen to see their businesses grow.

It’s not always easy to keep up with new trends and new developments but fortunately on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of February there is SPATEX. It is the best opportunity of the year to check out all the new products that are available and it couldn’t happen at a better time of year.

If you are attending SPATEX, and I sincerely hope that you are, there is an article here about how to get the best from your time spent at the show.

There will be a great deal to see and a lot of people that you will want to talk to and the article gives you some thoughts about how to organise your time to best effect.

You’ll probably be thinking that Brighton will be a good opportunity to review your supplier arrangements for the year ahead and I hope that you will come and visit us on Stand U130. We look forward to seeing you there.

Finally, somewhere else where you might like to be seen.

As I’m sure you know, aside from Wetleisure.co we have three consumer facing websites, YourPool, YourSpa and YourSauna.

The idea behind these sites was to provide a source of the very best information for any potential customers who were interested in these areas of the wet leisure market. The sites have been live for just over a year now.

Each site already contains between 40 and 60 articles and they are proving to be very popular.

We have a lot of statistics about increasing traffic on these sites but one fact is bound to get your attention.

Each of those sites has had between 5 and 9.5 thousand unique visits since launch.

Those visits represent customers interested enough in that area of our industry to be actively searching online for more information.

And what do they see on the site? They get a, well-written article that answers their questions and leads them to find out more – and that article is sponsored by a business that operates in the field that they are interested in.

That business could be your business.

The sites are designed to generate leads and enquiries, and they can do that for you. For Golden Coast account customers, that ‘sponsorship’ costs you nothing, just get in touch and we can get the process started.

We have also started carrying adverts on the YourSites for some of our account customers.

Wetleisure.co currently has almost 400 members and we are confident that we will reach 800 in the next few months.

If you are not already registered on WetLeisure.co take five minutes to do that now, while you are online, because all of our Golden Coast account customers will have their information displayed on each of our consumer sites.

All the best, we look forward to seeing you at SPATEX and if you have any thoughts you’d like to share about any issues raised in this newsletter then please use the comment box below.

All the best.

Designed specifically for above ground installation the pool cover systems are easy to install and even easier for the pool owner to use and include a range of features that make them an obvious choice for your next contract.

Moon Pool Cover

• Suitable for pools up to 5M x 10M in size
• Power options include mains electricity or solar
• User operated by key control at poolside
• Optimised axle height for reduced footprint.
• Impact and scratch resistant
• Solar panel incorporated into end stand
• Choice of end stand insert in 4 vibrant colours
• Choice of slat colours including white, solar, blue, grey and beige
• Suitable for retro fit or fitted to a range of new pool

Dune Pool Cover

• Suitable for pools up to 9M x 18m
• Power options include mains electricity or solar
• User operated by key control at poolside
• Optimised axle height for reduced footprint.
• Impact and scratch resistant
• Solar panel incorporated into stand
• Choice of slat colours including white, solar, blue, grey and beige
• Suitable for retro fit or fitted to a range of new pool

Both Moon and Dune can incorporate Quick Lock safety fixings to prevent unauthorised access tot eh pool

For further information or to place an order, please call the sales office on 01271 378100 send us an e-mail  orders@goldenc.com or visit our trade web shop

30,000 and counting

The runaway success of Golden Coast’s series of informative videos, “Andy’s Answers”, has reached another milestone with their 30,000th YouTube hit.

Conceived and presented by Golden Coast’s in-house engineer, Andy James, these short tutorials were created in response to the regular questioning he received from customers. By actually showing how to carry out each procedure, rather than leaving people to depend on written instructions, he felt he could make everything much clearer – and he has been proved right.

As the UK’s leading independent distributor of wet leisure products to the trade, provision of advice to those who install and maintain the equipment is something that Golden Coast is very keen to support. So far it has uploaded 40 HD videos, which can be accessed via http://goldenc.co/resources/andys-answers, and there are many others still in preparation.

Ask Andy

“We started with the questions we were asked most often,” says Golden Coast’s Managing Director Jamie Adams, “and then we have continued to add others as new issues have arisen. On our website we specifically ask visitors to let us know if there is any other topic they would like us to cover.”

The videos tackle any mechanical, electrical or general maintenance task involved in the installation and servicing of pool, spa and sauna equipment. To give an idea of the range, popular subjects have included changing a shaft seal on a swimming pool pump, maintaining a steam generator, fitting an LED pool light, using leak detection dye and cleaning a hot tub’s pipework.

Andy’s relaxed presentation style and his ability to explain issues clearly – with humour where appropriate – are not his only qualifications for the job, as he also has over 40 years of experience in the electro-mechanical trade. Golden Coast advises its trade customers to subscribe to the video feed, or just check the site regularly, to keep up to date with Andy’s latest expert advice.