What sort of businesses made up the survey sample?
It’s important to know some things about the businesses that respond to the survey even if we don’t know their names or have any other identification.
This first section of the survey can pick up industry trends like changes in the size of businesses by staff numbers, the sectors of the wet leisure industry that they service and their geographical location. The survey divides the country up into regions and so we ask, where does your business operate?
The majority of responses come from the South East, Midlands and the South West. This is almost certainly due to the relative economic strength of those regions.
In future years we may well look at London as a separate region as the economic climate of the capital is becoming increasingly removed from that of the rest of the country. Economic forecasts suggest that London’s economy will remain strong till the end of the decade.
Across the country as a whole, growth has slowed down to less than 1%.
Which sectors of the industry do you serve?
For three consecutive years pools came out at the top of this list but this year we see spas and hot tubs move ahead. Saunas had been languishing in third place but almost 50% of respondents this year said that they were doing sauna business. For a number of reasons, this could turn out to be the year of the sauna, but more on that later.
The other big differentiator is the difference between domestic and commercial work. Or at least there used to be a difference. The majority of businesses will now do a mixture of both types of work.
One reason for this is that domestic and commercial installations have become more similar with hotel and spas looking for a high aesthetic and standard of finish while domestic installations are increasingly using water treatment technology, heat pumps and automated dosing systems that were more usually found in a commercial setting.
What services do you offer customers?
Service and repairs has climbed steadily over the past 12 years and now stands at 95%. Service contracts are the lifeblood of the industry. (As such, we should use the survey to dig more deeply into that sector of our industry.)
The other services, with the exception of ecommerce, are levelling up. Soon virtually every business will offer their customers every service. And that makes sense. It’s much easier to cross sell to an existing customer than to go out and find a new one.
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