Big marketing campaign helps boost successful Perth consumer show

The Pool & Spa Lifestyle Expo Perth was held in February at Claremont Showgrounds with record breaking door sales seeing approximately 3500 adults visitors.

SPASA’s WA region manager Rebecca Smith says they had great representation from all aspects of the industry covering everything pool and spa.

“Exhibitors were extremely happy with the amount of foot traffic and received great sales, interest and lead numbers,” she says.

“This year we introduced Info Hub sessions and these proved exceptionally popular with expo visitors. All sessions were very well attended with our guest speakers being very well received, spending plenty of time answering questions and elaborating on their chosen topics – this is definitely a must for next year!”

Pool & Spa brand manager Daena Bougoure-Latchford says that February was an incredible month of engagement with a trifecta of expos in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.

“The Pool & Spa Lifestyle expos have never been more critical, continuing to connect more consumers with industry and keeping pools, spas and outdoor lifestyle products front and centre,” she says.

“The marketing campaign saw consumer engagement up nearly 200 per cent compared with the same period in 2022. The key objective of the Pool & Spa brand is to engage and inspire, helping to turn consumer dreams into realties. We know that consumers are content hungry and are making more considered choices so having a consolidated platform that speaks directly to the consumer and connects brands with a much bigger audience is a hugely powerful asset to ensure the continued growth of our industry.”

WA looking good

Lynley Papineau, managing director of fibreglass pool manufacturer, Aquatic Leisure Technologies, says that the level and type of consumer interest seems to be varying from state to state.

“For example, in Western Australia you’ve got a lot of smaller blocks. So the last two people I spoke to actually were a little 4.5 metre pool and a five metre plunge pool. A lot of people are loving the wader pools for the children, and the bench seat is an absolute favourite – it can be for the children to run up and down when they’re younger, then you can convert it into a champagne bench for the ladies as well. It can be an absolute universal family pool.

“A lot of people ask me where we see the economy going, particularly in WA.

“We came off a really tough economic conditions between 2015 and 2019. To the extent that our industry dropped 47 per cent. We went into October 2019 thinking, great summer, warm weather – and by March 2020 we were in the covid pandemic. So since even 2015 it’s been a really challenging environment.

“But then who would have guessed that we’d go through some of the strongest sales that we’ve ever seen as an organisation – our businesses were so lean, we had to then scale up hugely to try and accommodate some of the demand.

“Now there’s the crystal balling of what’s going to happen in the future. We’ve already seen sales probably slowed down a little bit, which has been impacted because of interest rate rises, a couple uncertain global economic times.

“But Western Australia is a little unique in that it has $10 billion worth of infrastructure going around the state still, and a very strong mining economy with low unemployment, and even though the interest rates are going up, we believe that there’s a really stable industry and really stable market going forward.

“And I think it will just tick along – it needed to stabilise, we needed it to calm down a little bit.

“This show we’ve been flat out for two days, and I think you’ve got a lot of people out there building still, a lot of people interested, a lot of people employed and Western Australia has some of the highest savings around the country. So they’ve got equity in their homes, and they’ve got some savings.

“So I really do think going forward as an industry in Western Australia, we’re going to be a little protected from some of what the other states might feel in terms of any sort of slowdown.”

Next expo

The Pool & Spa Lifestyle Expo, South Australia will be held at Wayville Pavilion, Royal Adelaide Showgrounds on March 25 and 26.