Lifestyle & Stories
Business View Oceania
16 January, 2023
Maytronics are pleased to feature in the latest Nov-Dec 2022 issue of Business View Oceania.
The digital magazine features current industry trends and best practices across a broad range of industries and is read by some of the most influential decision-makers driving our economy.
Business View Oceania interviewed Maytronics Dan Kwaczynski (Managing Director), Chris Papageorgiou (Co-Founder), and David Dean (Marketing Manager).
A copy of the article follows.
“Maytronics Australia was brought to life in 2010 and firmly introduced robotics to a market that was craving a better solution for automated pool cleaning. Formulated for optimal convenience, performance, sustainability, and support, the Dolphin brand is designed to provide consumers with a truly exceptional pool experience.
Maytronics Australia is primarily owned by the global Maytronics brand, which was established in 1983 as a pioneer in automated electronic pool cleaning technology. Maytronics Global states: “Maytronics’ vision is to provide a select range of novel pool care solutions, focusing on pool cleaning, environmentally friendly water treatment, and pool safety. We will achieve this by providing unparalleled service, support, and training to our network of dealers. We look forward to seeing more and more end users embracing the Dolphin Technology Advantage and benefiting from a cleaner, easier to maintain, and environmentally friendly pool.” Today, Maytronics Australia covers Australia, Southern Asia, New Zealand, the Pacific, and South Africa. The company has grown steadily from four branch locations in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney covered by eight staff, with additional branches in the Philippines, Singapore, New Zealand, and South Africa, serviced by a team of over 100.
Maytronics Australia’s product suite includes the Dolphin robotic swimming pool cleaner, Dolphin Wave commercial robotic pool cleaner, Mineral Swim and Ozone Swim purification systems, and the Ecoclear swimming pool media range. Maytronics’ Dolphin robotic pool cleaner is the world’s first Climate Care-certified robotic swimming pool cleaner. The Dolphin not only removes debris from the pool; it actively scrubs the floor and walls, allowing for optimal water filtration. Known as the ‘new benchmark’ in swimming pool and spa sustainability, the Dolphin helps to reduce energy consumption by up to 83% and water consumption by around 60-80%.
Dan Kwaczynski (Managing Director), Chris Papageorgiou (Co-Founder), and David Dean (Marketing Manager) share their insight into Maytronics Australia. Dan begins, “Our industry has experienced tremendous growth over the last decade. To give you some perspective, our offering was less than 1% market share when we set up Maytronics Australia in 2010. Today, robotic pool cleaners hold 40%+ of the current national market share. So, technology has turned the market- and that was our dream and our ambition from the very beginning. We wanted to show Australian pool owners that they could embrace a change from traditional cleaning methods to robotic, which was much more advanced and offered a better swimming experience. We wanted to be focused on doing business with great people, leading marketing, and a combination of a push-pull strategy that has worked really well over the years. Our offering at Maytronics Australia is all about bettering the experience for pool users.”
Chris adds, “We want to create a hassle-free pool. Our core business is centered around using advanced technologies, specifically robotics, to provide an amazing, easy clean that is largely automated. When people go to our technology, they generally don’t go back. We have other products we have filtered in over the last three or four years that work with our cleaners towards making pools safer, more enjoyable, and simpler to maintain, but our bread and butter has been leading in robotic cleaning technology.”
Staying ahead of the game in such a competitive market is not without its challenges, David shares. “Maytronics invests heavily into research and development initiatives to keep abreast of market changes and remain one step ahead of our competition. So, every two to three years, we’re bringing in new technology, new systems, new methods for the type of technology we have. We have a great roadmap that will have us in good stead for the same momentum moving forward. An area that is developing very quickly and shows a lot of promise is the IoT, connectivity, and automation space. These are all aspects of robotics that we are very well educated in things like collecting data on market and pool analytics, information that shows us how we can better support our consumer base.”
Chris highlights Maytronics’ pool sanitation system, Mineral Swim. “Mineral Swim works to create a destiny experience in your backyard pool inspired by the Dead Sea. Using 100% Dead Sea sustainably sourced minerals. Combined with natural ozone purification to act as a powerful pool sanitiser, meaning massive reductions in harsh chemicals such as chlorine. But we are a very focused industry player, so we don’t supply anything and everything. A lot of our competitors have every single different type of equipment. We prefer to have few niche products that are deeper and broader in their offering.”
Primarily a B2B company, Maytronics Australia works with retailers, distributors, franchisers, builders, and pool service providers across domestic and export markets. The team follows a key set of values: Innovation & Creativity, Personal Responsibility, Excellence, Customer Focus, Integrity & Fairness, and Teamwork & Collaboration. David elaborates, “The values of our organisation are instilled in everything we do, both internally and in our relationships with the rest of our industry. In addition to our key values, we have an informal priority acronym call JCP, which is joy, confidence, and pride. And that’s about having joy in what we do, the confidence that we are working for a reputable, genuine organisation, and having pride in our work when we show others. It’s also great to work within an environment that’s still very much family orientated. So, although we’ve grown to over 100 people, we are still very much employee first.”
Dan continues, “We’ve really had an incredible journey with people. We work very hard to find the right people and put them in the right spaces with the right tools to do the job well. There’s an exceptional level of trust throughout our team- we’ve generally found that great people like to have freedom to operate, and they also like to work with other great people, so they feed off each other. Nobody’s better than anybody else. We all want to better our industry, and we all have children, families, and partners to go home to that we are here to support. That’s the most important thing.”
There are a number of industry partners, suppliers, and collaborators Maytronics Australia would like to thank. They include the global Maytronics group, the Elite independent dealer network, Poolwerx, Swimmart, Clark Rubber, Jims, Waterco, Pentair, Pool Ranger, Reece, the IQ Group Global, Aquatechnics, Freedom Pools, Compass Pools, Leisure Pools, Barrier Reef Pools, Waterland, Pro Water, Dolphin Pacific, JD Pools, Summertime Pools, Masterbuilt Pools, and the Swimming Pool and Spa Association of Australia (SPASA).
Moving forward, Maytronics Australia plans to undertake an aggressive growth strategy to build out their robotic pool cleaning space, introduce further interconnectivity and data analytics features, provide more pool builder-focussed services, and continue developing the Mineral Swim and Ozone Swim purification systems. This is certainly a space to watch!”