here’s amazing potential for sales in swimming pool covers. Indeed, actual sales are up, anywhere from 10 to 15 percent on everything from automatic covers to solar covers. Spa covers sales appear even better – up about 30 percent, according to builders and manufacturers.
Yet the potential for sales is even greater.
Consider that 4.3 million inground pools were installed in 2002 in the United States, according to NSPI. Conversely, only about 120,000 pool covers are sold annually, states P.K. Data.
A recent Pool & Spa News survey of builders confirms the lack of a matchup between new pools and cover sales. Only 32 percent of builders sell a cover with their pool projects. And of those, only 24 percent are automatic.
Many builders complain that covers make it more difficult to create the freeform, aesthetic beauties clients demand today. In addition, they say, bringing up pool covers inevitably raises negative aspects of pool ownership: that pools require maintenance and may even cause death.
But consumers seem to be saying something different. Increasingly concerned about safety and maintenance, more and more customers are turning to covers as solutions to both problems. In fact, nearly 20 percent of consumers request a cover without any prompting from builders at all.
What’s more, manufacturers are offering new techniques that make it easier to blend covers into even the most complicated designs. Wooed by profit margins as high as 100 percent, more and more builders and service technicians are getting into the covers business.
Challenges still have to be overcome: The industry needs more and better-trained cover installers and techs, and it needs to do an even better job educating consumers.
But all in all, it looks as if the potential for pool and spa covers is being … uncovered.
