Mitcham 1985
‘Endless’ by name and nature “Endless Pools & Spas is our generic name. We have two separate businesses – ‘Endless Spas’ and ‘Endless Pools’. We promote lifestyle and the benefits of water therapy in both”. - Jenny Anderson
When, where and how did Endless Pools & Spas begin? Our original history began many years ago when my husband, Warren Anderson, purchased a spa from Alpine Spas. He asked the owner Russell Pearce if he would sell the business to him. Warren was doing bathroom renovations at the time and had bought the spa to relieve aches and pains caused by years of floor and wall tiling. It certainly helped him to recover after a hard day’s work. Warren and a friend commenced working together, taking over Alpine Spas around 1980. It was a partnership between two new friends, one worked in administration and the other – Warren - did all the sales. The Alpine Pools showroom was on the corner of High St and Warrigal Rds, Ashburton. I was on maternity leave from the education department at that time.
SPASA VICTORIA
Unfortunately this business venture only lasted about 18 months. Warren reverted to working at our bathroom renovation business in Hawthorn. As we all know, business partnerships can be fraught with difficulty, especially when partners do not have the same goals in mind! Warren still wanted to continue selling spas, so he started looking for another spa supplier and eventually came across an in-ground fibreglass spa shell company in QLD.
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While we were in Hawthorn, Warren said that if we are to sell spas, we needed a point of difference, so he invented the first swim spa in the world! It was also made of fibreglass. We made our first television ad and did a photo shoot with Marianne Dorslar (Tattslotto host for 22 years) and Dermott Brereton. It took a while to get the new swim spa off the ground, so we kept doing bathroom renovations and we were known for a short time as ‘Adapt Bathrooms and Spas’. Our Hawthorn location was a single fronted two storey terraced house with a small backyard. We used to plumb customer’s spas in the side street on the nature strip. We installed several display spas, including the swim spa in the open-air backyard. Warren and I would work every weekend with our two young children playing in the spas. That was the beginning of ‘Endless Spas’
We set up in a large modern showroom in Mitcham and negotiated a big distributorship with a Sydney company called ‘Stylus Bathrooms’. They supplied us with a large range of acrylic spas while we continued to manufacture the fibreglass swim spa. We eventually found a moulding company with a machine capable of forming this large sized vessel, however the vacuum tank was inadequate. With a bit of creative thinking, we found an old petrol storage tank and welded it up to strengthen it to hold the vacuum. We now had the system and the mould came next, as this was going to be the largest vacuumed formed vessel in the Southern Hemisphere.
Within the first 6 months of selling the fibreglass models, we encountered a small percentage of surface problems; the resins were not coping with hot water. We decided that despite being a great product, we needed to improve the quality, so we decided to manufacture a vacuumformed acrylic mould. This would be a very expensive process and presented a lot of challenges, as no vacuum former was capable of handling anything as big as a swim spa. Sales were growing and we needed more room for plumbing, so we left Hawthorn in 1985. First mould Endless Swimming Spa
