OPINION
The Only Constant Thing In Business Is Change – And The Pace Of That Change Is Constantly Increasing!
“Nothing in life stays the same. Trees grow and cliffs crumble. But when things are constantly changing, and quickly too, how does that make us feel and behave? Do we see opportunities, or a crisis?” Asks Jamie Adams, Managing Director of Golden Coast
O
f course, change is good. If it wasn’t for change we’d all be using mobile phones the size of house bricks. We’d be wearing flared trousers and looking
at inflation rates of 10% or more. We’d be advertising in the Yellow Pages and have a beeper clipped to our belt in case a customer called. I don’t think that many of us would want to go back to that, but that was 25 years ago, and in some ways it feels like just yesterday, doesn’t it?
The thing about change in the world today is the sheer speed at which it happens and the fact that things seem to change constantly. It is almost bewildering. And when you are trying to plan for the future of your business, bewildered is the last thing you want to be.
LET’S SEE WHAT TOMORROW BRINGS
At a really basic level, running a wet leisure business is easy. You supply goods and services that satisfy the needs of your customers. But it is at that really basic, fundamental level, that change begins to make things difficult.
What goods will be on the market? We are always looking for innovative new products and products that make the best of new technologies. Some of them are going to catch on and be massively successful; some of them won’t. How do you spot the winners?
What needs are those customers going to want satisfying? There has been a slow and steady shift in customers coming to our industry primarily for fun and relaxation, to more and more people seeking health and wellbeing. But our customers are changing in other ways too.
And the thing is, there are no ‘right answers’, because none of us can see into the future.
Having said that, it is possible to spot trends. You can see general directions that things are going on and take a good guess at how they will affect the wet leisure industry.
44 October 2015 SPN
BETAMAX OR DVD? HIPSTER OR HIPPY?
In terms of products, green looks good. Whether it is to reduce their energy bills or whether it is for ecological reasons, people are keen to save energy and they are keen to move to sustainable energy sources. Wind and solar farms dot the landscape. The car industry is putting more and more resource behind electric and hybrid technology. Heat pumps are going in to new build houses almost as a matter of course.
This trend already affects our industry. LED lighting, heat pumps and solar power are all growing areas of the business. Customers understand that they need to pay a little more up front in order to save money in the longer term. Sometimes it feels as if it is we, in the industry, are less keen to promote them because of that higher, initial cost. Mobile technology and the internet aren’t going to turn out to be a flash in the pan, either. Devices and applications for measuring and controlling how you heat your home from your smartphone or tablet are becoming commonplace. Are people going to want to turn on their spa, heat their pool and monitor the water quality in the same way? Yes, I think so.
HOW ELSE ARE PEOPLE GOING TO CHANGE?
Health and wellbeing is the modern fixation but there are other trends too. People want instant gratification. They have less time and less patience than they used to.
They expect products and installations to be designed and finished to a higher and higher standard. Let’s face it, a modern kitchen drawer closes in a more impressive way than your CD player did.
I THINK WE’LL STICK TO THE OLD WAYS, THANK YOU
I’m a believer in tradition and continuity. Golden Coast has been our family business since 1977.
If employing great people, being fair and being polite and offering the best customer
service that we can all sound like old fashioned values, then I’m old fashioned and proud of it. But I look at it this way; if our business is exactly the same as it was five years ago, then we are doing something wrong. Because the world has changed, the market has changed, the economy has changed and people have changed. I’m always asking myself if our business will continue to thrive in its current format. Our management team is constantly challenged to find the next winning formulae. And we aren’t alone in that.
I DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING! A changing future is an opportunity or a crisis, depending on how you react to it. Kodak, Comet and HMV were all big names that could obviously see how the world was changing but simply chose to ignore it. It doesn’t matter how big you are, if the world changes enough and you don’t evolve, you’ll find yourself extinct.
And then there are businesses that have embraced new technology and become ‘overnight’ sensations. Uber. TransferWise. Airbnb. And it’s easy to see that technology is at the heart of those business successes, but is it really?
All three of them offer better customer service, a better customer experience. They use a changing world to satisfy their customer’s needs in a new way.
No wet leisure business is a Kodak or an
Uber, but we can all learn from them. Accept that the world is changing. Really listen to what your customers are asking for. Keep looking for new ways to keep them happy.
The pace of change isn’t going to slow down, just the opposite, so coming to terms with that and being excited by the future is the one thing that we can all absolutely depend on having to do.
Jamie Adams is Managing Director of Golden Coast, the current Chairman of Pool Industry Promotions (PIP) and a board member of the British Swimming Pool Federation (BSPF).
www.swimmingpoolnews.co.uk
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