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SPN DEC 2011 PeopleNews
www.swimmingpoolnews.co.uk
Investment into research to ensure customers are supplied with the best surfaces possible remains key to the business.
“We are doing some research at the moment into the effects of chorine on different surfaces,” added Paul.
FLEXFLOORING – A GROWING NAME IN SAFETY SURFACING!
Flexflooring Ltd directors Simon Hubble and Paul Robinson are coming to the end of the first year’s trading for what has been a new name in safety surfacing in the pool industry. The business started up after a re-structure and re-branding of Poolsafe Ltd, the well known flooring company based in Maidstone.
FlexFlooring specialises in safety flooring with anti slip qualities and offers surface preparation, cleaning services and cleaning products as well as installation.
“We set ourselves a turnover target of £500,000 for the first year and we’ve just gone past that so we’ve reached our financial targets,” said Paul who has held a variety of positions including managing director of a market research company, management consultant and even trained as a maths teacher before joining Simon at Poolsafe.
The market opportunities added Paul, are considerable.
“Our main competition comes from playground companies but the difference we bring to the market is the expertise in surfacing within chlorinated environments.”
Flexflooring brought on board new investors with operational and financial management experience in January as the business started to create a brand that not only works with the existing customer base within the swimming pool sector, but allows them to work in other markets including flooring for splash pads, interactive water features, children’s play areas and golf pathways. Flexflooring offers safety surfacing products including Rubbaflex rubber flooring and the company has taken over the exclusive distribution of UltraTUFF™ pool and deck coating in the UK and Europe.
“We have found that not all colours behave the same in these environments. Orange,” he adds “doesn’t do as well as blue for instance.” Flexflooring have been providing safety flooring in their first year from 30 square metres on domestic pools through to 400 to 500 square metres for a commercial sized pools. Commercial pools are clearly a growing market as safety concerns in and around swimming pools and fear of litigation from accidents in and around pools has made safety a real priority. “We are very keen on getting feedback from the customer after a job has been completed and routinely send out customer satisfaction surveys to our clients. For me personally I think it’s a tough industry,” adds Paul.
“The first visual signs of any problem with a surface will manifest itself through the rubber, but the rubber is not necessarily the problem. To give an example of the kind of problems we can face, we looked at one incident where the rubber was delaminating, but when we examined the concrete substrata we found the concrete was disintegrating and subsequently discovered that the concrete had a very low cement content, we now try and get involved with specifying the concrete.”
Flexflooring offer their unique safety surfacing products and services throughout the UK. A new website is already in operation and has additional safety information and technical specifications fro clients to look at.
i FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
F FLEXFLOORING LTD ( 01622 747909 :
www.flexflooring.co.uk
ROGER MILLWARD TO RETIRE FROM STA
Roger Millward has announced his plans to retire as Chief Executive of the Swimming Teachers’ Association on his 70th birthday in July next year. The announcement was made to trustees, staff and regional organisers at the association’s 79th annual meeting.
Roger joined STA in 1991 as a consultant and was appointed Chief Executive in 1994, when the organisation was best known for producing swimming badges. Under Roger’s leadership, the association has grown into the world’s largest swim teaching and lifesaving organisation, delivering training solutions across four key business areas – swimming teaching, lifesaving, first aid and leisure management. STA has also quadrupled its membership and increased the number of people trained from approximately 1,000 per year to over 30,000 per year in the UK alone; programmes are now delivered in 22 countries across the world. STA also now works with all of the key swimming nations including USA, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and many countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. David Candler, STA President said: “STA would not be the formidable organisation it is today without Roger Millward. His fearless determination to ensure that STA has a voice in the marketplace is one of the reasons why STA is in such a strong position commercially and financially.”
Alan Siddons, STA’s current Business Development Director takes over as Chief Executive in July next year with Roger working in a consultative role.
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