The French want a big bath this summer. While the increase in swimming pool sales had already reached 11% in 2019, the number of contacts between buyers and sellers has doubled, even tripled, since the deconfinement. All these quotes will not come to fruition, but this sudden rush towards swimming pools in favor of a summer which will be played out for many at home should save the year 2020 for the whole sector.
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" The swimming pool market has been structurally buoyant for several years ," explains Gilles Mouchiroud, the president of the French Federation of Swimming Pools and Spas, bringing together half of the 2100 players in the profession. In previous years, the progression was in double digits every year, with in particular 2.7 billion euros of turnover in 2019, in progression of 11%. Certainly the sector was already living comfortable hours before 2020, therefore. But since the deconfinement and the injunction to domestic holidays, the standards of pool builders saturate as never before.
Small, fully-equipped pools
" Today, there is a very strong increase in requests for information from our resellers, two to three times more than usual ," continues Gilles Mouchiroud. There are three categories of customers: those who dream a little and make an estimate that may not go further, those who really wanted to make a pool for this summer when they had not committed anything before, and projects perennial, well thought out, which will undoubtedly succeed. We estimate that a third of all these new requests will succeed, which remains a very favorable trend. However, we remain very attentive to the capacity of each household to invest in a swimming pool in relation to their purchasing power . ”
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The swimming pool style that should be unanimous this year is, as in previous years, the small well-equipped swimming pool, often above ground. " Before the fashion was for swimming pools 12 meters by 6 meters deep, today they are small pools, very equipped, on average 37 square meters ", concludes Gilles Mouchiroud.
Rent your afternoon at the pool
Not all individuals will have the means, or the space or the desire, to have a swimming pool built this summer. For some, swimming could involve renting private pools for an afternoon or a weekend, a trend that has exploded since the start of confinement. " We have increased our turnover by ten over the month of May compared to last year," explains Raphaëlle de Monteynard, the founder of Swimmy, a site created in 2017 which connects swimming pool owners and tenants. The deconfinement is one of the reasons for this success, since people were happy to find some leisure, but we also benefited from an exceptional weather in May. The site, which made 400,000 euros in turnover in 2019, should reach 1 or even 1.2 million in 2020.