Visitor quality high at successful Sydney pool and spa expo

Visitation was up at February’s Pool & Spa Lifestyle Expo Sydney, with numbers returning to pre-covid levels. Especially positive was the description by exhibitors of the visitors as high quality, with many people keen to buy and choose their optional extras.

SPASA CEO Lindsay McGrath says this event brought the show back to its high point of previous years.

“It was great to see the numbers back up from last year’s clash with the national election,” he says.

“Our exhibitors returned to a single pavilion, which created a vibrant buzz on the floor. Leads were as hot as we expected with an estimated quarter of the region’s yearly pool and spa sales walking through the exhibition doors.”

He says the next Pool & Spa Lifestyle expo is in South Australia with the Adelaide event set to deliver a great return for the stand holders.

Carl Yench, Ezarri by Europe Imports

“The quality of the show has been fantastic – it couldn’t be better. Previous years we had a lot of people coming through just thinking about putting in pools, this year the quality of the people that are coming through, they’re already at planning stages, going through DAs, working with designers, working with architects at the mid-to-high end of the market. Everyone is ready to rock’n’roll, but they’re planning ahead as well. People are aware of what’s happened with logistics and material availability, and are planning to do selections well ahead of time.”

When asked about rising interest rates he says that didn’t seem to have an effect on enquiry, and in fact he was seeing a lot more people pushing towards concrete pools.

Tom Rogerson, Revolvashade

The Queensland company has recently come under new ownership and is starting to venture into more states.

“The products have been tried and tested over 30 years, and we’ve got a great footprint in southeast Queensland, but we’ve now started to go to Sydney, go to Melbourne - to show end users what they can have, but also to meet pool builders.

“The most popular size is the four metres, which is why we bring them to the shows, but we go up to five metres – the five metres is massive. I think we’re the only manufacturer that does five metres, and we’re also the only Australian manufacturer at this quality – a couple of other small operations do umbrellas in Australia, but most of the volume sellers at this price point are overseas. The customer picks their frame colour, canopy colour, canopy size, canopy shade, and they’re ready in about four to six weeks.

“These come back for a canopy replacement after they’ve been used for about 12 to 15 years. The frame is still perfect to that point. They might need a small touch up or might need a new strap or something like that.”

Joel Stern, Sterns Pools

“It’s been a very good day today. I wasn’t here yesterday, but Sunday has been very positive, we had lots of customers come through with a quality level of enquiry.

“Recently, we acquired Miami Pools, which is a long standing fiberglass business in the Sydney market. So we’ve brought that into our fold. And it’s been a very positive show with that.

“Miami Pools is a manufacturing business that had been making about 300 pools per year.

“So we manufacture the shells out of our factory in Liverpool. So in that factory, we’re making both the modular aboveground pools as well as the fiberglass pools. So a bit unique in the sense that we can offer both of those to the consumers.

“Our factory’s very large and we’ve been utilising a very small section – so there’s a window of opportunity to put in the fiberglass section in an existing space, with a very large area down the back where we have future plans to expand.

“So we’re getting set up right now, the machines are coming in. It’s all up and running as of the first of Feb. It’s been an interesting month getting into a new area of the pool industry. As you know, we’ve been in the aboveground game for God knows how long.”

Marc Fraser, Aquea

“It’s been a fantastic day. Lots of lots of new opportunities, lots of consumers seeing the products, loving what we’re doing.

“They loved the safety and the clean look of the new V-Lock skimmer lid. We’ve got four different models to suit basically any sort of infill that you need: timber, stone, tile. Depending on what sort of surface finish they want around the pool, we’ve got a model to suit.

“This year looks really, really busy for us, because we have just launched the V-Lock and a lot of people have been taking notice of it.”

Next expo

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