Hot Tub & Swim Spa Scene FRESH APPROACH


RIPTIDE TAKE OVER FORMER POOL SITE


ABOVE: Hot Tub Barn has become a Riptide retail footprint that is being rolled out to retail points


with everything documented – it reminded me of HotSpring of the 1980s,” Huw reveals. “You think we work hard,” Huw comments. “The Chinese work ethic involves a six day week, 12 hours a day and you get two weeks holiday with the odd dragon race thrown in,” he says. Crystal Island Leisure Products is a company that has grown in a Chinese way, Huw explains, attracting interest from third parties as it gathers momentum to achieve its goal of floating on the Shanghai stock exchange, Huw reveals. Talks with a number of other parties are continuing throughout Europe and Crystal Island intend to have distribution and take their own product through those channels. To emphasise this, they will have a major showing at the forthcoming Piscine show in Lyon.


GECKO CONTROLS


Huw worked with Crystal Island Leisure Products to come up with an inventory of moulds that would ultimately create four separate brands; the entry level Urban Lite that is a 2kw plug and play. A next level price which is the Heritage, then the Prestige topped by the highest priced Startlite range. All Riptide models feature LX 300 LP pumps, Gecko circulation pumps and a Gecko control box, Huw confirms.


“The Riptide moulds are influenced, of course, from my history with HotSpring,” acknowledges Huw. “HotSpring brought me up. Whoever trains us, that is our ‘go forward’ model whatever role we are in,” he acknowledges.


“The Chinese will build whatever you want. You can specify an inferior spa in China but equally, you can create an American standard specification too,” he continues.


ABOVE: A former swimming pool showroom has been turned into one of the new Riptide spa stores.


Hot Tub & Swim Spa Scene FRESH APPROACH 15


Once operated by Alton pools, who built new pools and also undertook maintenance contracts, the company owner surrendered his lease on retirement in December last year, which left the host garden centre with a dilapidated cabin and a large hole. Hot Tub Barn has negotiated a seven-year lease with three month rent-free period and undertook to breathe new life in to the sales location and cabin. Work started in the first week of January 2018 and initially efforts were to make the cabin water-tight and gut out all the old room partitions. By mid-February the office was plasterboard lined and painted, there were new electrics, new carpets and a new test soak room. Then work began on the outside area, first replacing all the fences and creating a flat bottom in the old swimming pool, and laying artificial turf over all the old cracked and mismatched patio slabs


A stock of three swim spas arrived two weeks before opening. These were craned into the old pool to give a semi-sunken look and then a floor of decking was created to conceal the rest of the old pool.


Three days before opening, the hot tubs were installed along with computers, broadband and new phone lines. The displays were dressed and chemicals put on the shelves. New staff had been trained three weeks prior and had been gaining experience in our other stores.


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