www.swimmingpoolnews.co.uk
Editor’sLetter DEC 2011 SPN
5551
spn incorporating Pool & Spa Industry is the official trade magazine for the UK wet leisure markets and is the only trade publication that invests in the industry it serves.
letter
Editor and Co Publisher: Alan Lewis T: +44 (0)1823 431767
E:
alan.lewis@gopublishing.co.uk
Feature Writer: Karen Witney T: +44 (0)1865 422089
E:
karen.witney@gopublishing.co.uk
Co Publisher and Sales: Tony Weston T: +44 (0)1474 813433
E:
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Ad Sales Manager: Victoria Plompen T: +44 (0)1223 911323
E:
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gopublishing.co.uk
Operations Director: Jon Wadeson T: +44 (0)20 8306 8150
E:
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Subeditor: Andrea Hartshorne E:
thewordsmiths@hotmail.co.uk
Production: Cathy Varley T: +44 (0)1823 432416
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Accounts: Sam Bartholomew T: +44 (0)1823 430639
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Annual subscription rates (6 issues): UK £30, Europe £50 and ROW £60 To subscribe, please visit our website.
spn is published by T
he last few weeks have been like a hunting expedition.
gopublishing
PO Box 874, Taunton, Somerset, TA1 9HB, UK n
www.gopublishing.co.uk
Printed in the UK by The Manson Group Ltd
Go Publishing Ltd accepts no liability for any insert, display or classified advertisement included in Swimming Pool News. While every reasonable care is taken to ensure that all advertisers are reliable and reputable, Swimming Pool News can give no assurance they will fulfil their obligations under all circumstances. The views expressed in the articles in Swimming Pool News are the contributors’ own. All rights reserved. Copyright for all materials published in spn remains with the publishers. Material contained in this publication is not to be reproduced in whole or in part without the prior permission of Go Publishing Ltd.
Anyone who has attended one or more of the three big autumn trade shows in Barcelona, then Cologne and finally Las Vegas, which all came round in rapid succession, has been trying to hunt down the new products which might make a difference in 2012 and beyond. They’ve been looking for things which will lift sales next year. That means potentially discovering a new generation of pool and spa products. Crucially it depends on what difference any discovered innovations will make to the customer, the client who is tempted to buy a swimming pool, already has one to run, or has a spa to look after. Given three wishes for 2012 the trade might opt first and most understandably for a great summer. Nothing will bring the collective smiles back as much as sunshine and then more sunshine. But after that one wish might be that the industry continues to unravel products which make the most of ‘intelligent systems’, linking in with the enthusiasm for home and office technology. And thirdly perhaps it would be to have more practical answers to the one thing which is on everyone’s minds – the cost of fuel. All three shows staged open forums where the
messages, often aggressively, from pool builders were that pools were too expensive to run. Consumers were now frightened of the cost of maintaining a pool.
A post mortem on the three shows shows cause for optimism.
Just over half of the genuinely new and innovative products to be seen this autumn had a theme of ‘intelligent systems’ to them – products which will remotely link in to a technology hub and remotely switch and manage everything from water treatment dosing and filtration operations, to checking and switching on hot tubs to controlling, heating lighting and measuring water quality. What has changed is these products which have been in the background for some time are now being accepted by the industry as not expensive gimmicks but genuinely worthwhile products which will win some enthusiasm from customers who may only use their pool infrequently and are away for the pool for long periods.
It is hassle free control through technology and it seems here to last. At Piscina in Barcelona, Pentair’s Intellipool, which controls pool systems via a Smartphone or the internet, was rightly acclaimed as one of the star products of the show. The message about energy efficiency has been received and understood – passed on it seems from the consumer via suppliers to the manufacturers. At the European shows it was clear the industry has responded over the last couple of years and provided the tools for reducing energy consumption, reducing the carbon footprint of swimming pools from basic insulation, combined heat and power, ground and air source heat pumps, biomass and condense boilers, solar technology and water savings systems. The tough part is to make sure these innovations get out to the end user and make a genuine difference.
Alan Lewis – Editor
Go Publishing also publishes: What Pool & Hot Tub magazine – our sister publication – is the only consumer magazine in the UK that provides the complete and crucial information that potential buyers are looking for! For more information visit the What Pool & Hot Tub website at
www.whatpoolandhottubmag.co.uk
Cover image courtesy of Artesian Spas /
www.artesianspas.co.uk
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