Heating up: winter is prime time for hot tub usage, but not hot tub sales. Here are 10 things you can do to heat up your winter hot tub sales - retailing

Pool & Spa News, Dec 19, 2001 by Thomas Clark

It's the great dichotomy: One of the most popular times to use a hot tub is on a winter evening. But most dealers will tell you that the winter months are the most challenging time of the year to sell a hot tub.

Several factors combine to create this slowdown. Chief among them is the weather. Customers tend to stay home when temperatures drop and snow falls. Also, frozen ground keeps contractors from installing some spas.

Then there's the holiday season, when potential customers think more about playing Santa than soaking in a spa. "People have other things on their minds, so they tend to put off major ticket items until later," says Brad Kelly, a salesman at Anchor Aquatech in Yorktown, Va.

To some degree, the winter break is welcome. When the weather outside is frightful, the sales staff inside can spruce up the showroom, plan for the approaching madness of spring and summer, and even carve out a week or two for resting and recreation. But there's only so much slowdown a company can survive. Hot tub dealers in several cold-weather states offer these 10 tips for keeping winter sales hot:

1 Creative a winter wonderland.

Even in the coldest months, people want to spend more time outside, says Monte Lanka, manager of the California Spa and Fitness Store in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada: "We don't want to have them thinking of us only during summer, especially since people get the most out of a hot tub during winter."

Lanka says his store runs print ads showing people outdoors enjoying a hot tub. He also creates "winter scenes" within the store: a hot tub displayed with skis and fake snow. "We dress it up and give it a nice feel," Lanka says.

At New England Spas and Sunrooms in suburban Boston, would-be buyers are invited to take a test-dip in the spa that sits on the store's deck. Co-owner Peter Lavenson says that seeing customers climbing into the spa on a winter day is a powerful lure for people traveling the road outside the store.

"Hot tubs in winter are a lot of fun," says Joe Stone, incoming president of the National Spa & Pool Institute's Hot Tub Council. "There are a lot of benefits to a hot tub: the ability to relax, the ability to retreat into your own paradise, the ability to renew one's self. Ask anyone to tell you about the last time they went to a hotel and had a great time, and the story almost always involves a hot tub. Well, you can do the same thing at home. You can go right into your backyard and create a wonderful environment."

2 Offer incentives.

By offering specials on stock models, Sensational Spas in Stevensville, Mich., saw its business jump 20 percent in 1999. Business manager Jackie VanHorn says the special offer might be anything from "throwing in some add-on like a cover lifter" to giving a price discount. (Price breaks typically run between $250 and $500.) Sensational Spas restricts these special offers to "whatever happens to be on the floor," says VanHorn. But considering that the store generally displays 30 to 50 spas, that's a sizable selection.

3 Be special ... really special.

November had always been the worst month at Olympic Hot Tub Co. in Seattle. Now November is the home of the three-store company's only true sale of the year. While the company runs periodic specials throughout the year, says co-owner Alice Cunningham, "we can advertise truthfully that this is the lowest price of the year."

Close-out sales are a natural for wintertime because stores are preparing for the soon-to-arrive new year's models. Anchor Aquatech in Yorktown, Va., traditionally holds an inventory close-out sale in late December or January, says salesman Brad Kelly. "Customers can save quite a bit. That's always a big sale for us," he notes.

4 Advertise.

"We try to do a little more advertising in winter," says VanHorn of Sensational Spas. "We stress that we're open year 'round, seven days a week, and that we do deliver in winter."

VanHorn says a new radio campaign "is doing very well for us so far." Although a heavy newspaper advertiser in the past, the local adult contemporary radio station "gave me an offer I couldn't turn down." She says the station is geared to office environments and to women. VanHorn adds that a previous campaign on a station that targeted men in their 30s and 40s brought "zero response."

New England Spas and Sunrooms has been encouraging hot tub purchases this year by stressing two themes in its late fall/early winter marketing: "Get out of the jungle and into a hot tub" and "vacation at home," says co-owner Lavenson. The company has pushed the messages in all media, including direct mail, in conjunction with announcing its new store.

5 Bone up.

"We use winter for the salespeople and me to get our act together," says Brandon Eytcheson, spa sales and advertising design manager at Performance Pool and Spa in Woodbury, Minn. "We make a trip down to the Saratoga plant. It can be very important to have that firsthand knowledge of how things are done.

"We'll also have our Saratoga guy come down and go over pitches with us," he adds. "And we'll do sales pitches to each other here in the showroom."