Aaaand we’re back!

Happy Friday! It’s been a while since the last blog, and we’ve had people ask about what’s happening here at Airquee, so it’s only fair that we tell you the latest. It’s less than a month until the first show of the season kicks off, with the EAS (Euro Attractions Show) and LIW (Leisure Industry Week) happening at the same time, on the 20^th September. It’s certainly been an experience for every team here making sure we can show every customer visiting us in 2 countries can see us at our best. Closely following those shows are the Leisure Supplies Show, our Northern Ireland Open Weekend, and the show at our Cwmbran HQ. We’re very excited to show you some of the new products we have.

In the lead up to the show, we have had a lot of clients visiting our Show Rooms here in Cwmbran, and our stock reserves which we made before our Romanian colleagues had their summer break has been selling like hot cakes whenever it’s inflated. Customers visiting to collect their units or just to witness the quality of the units haven’t been in short supply at all.

The last 2 weeks, we have been lucky enough to have Viktor from our Romania team over to help with honing processes and creating new ones, which will let you see all the great new products we have in store. He has been busy the past few months recording and editing the amazing videos on our social media, and after proving his skill, he will be helping in other departments too. It’s definitely an exciting time here!

Despite how busy we have been with our shows we have made sure that each unit is made to the highest quality, without compromise. It has been a challenging, exciting and rewarding time for us here to achieve it all, and we feel we owe it to all of you to give the best we can.

There will be more to say in the coming weeks so be sure to keep up with Airquee News!

New Products and Signs of Summer!

The past few weeks at Airquee, we haven’t just been busy, we’ve had the chance to make a whole host of different inflatables. These have ranged from our standard A-frame Bouncy Castles, to arches, to giant obstacle courses! It’s been an excellent chance for us to demonstrate our innovation while keeping pace with the incredible demand.

Products not to scale.

We’ve had a constant flow of customers coming through the door, and with almost every person buying something from the showroom, it’s like a revolving door of inflatables and soft play. We have some fantastic units in stock, and there is the e-Range available from Airquee Online, so you can purchase yours today and be fully prepared for the end of May Bank Holiday!

Friday 13^th might be unlucky for some, but it kicked off the start of an excellent weekend, and the first signs of summer!

Sales Team in Romania

Today has been a particularly busy week, and the Sales Team has gone global – in a manner of speaking. The newest members of our ever growing Sales Team; Sol and Ollie have joined Mark and Kerry on a trip to our TWO factories at Covasna in Romania. It has been an excellent experience for them and has certainly increased their understanding and honed their knowledge of products even more. They both now fully appreciate what happens when they email a simple order across to the Production Team and how many problems it can cause if information is missing.  They have also witnessed first-hand how hard the 225 plus employees work on Despatch days during the very busy period in the lead up to the Season as they had to stay until 11pm yesterday evening just to make sure that everything was made, checked and loaded in time!

Sol and Ollie set up to work as normal in Airquee 2

It is something that’s posted often in this blog, but the factory has been extremely busy once again, and both Sol and Ollie were awestruck as they explored the 150m of factory space in one of our two factories, you could almost see the steam coming off the machines as they were working so hard!  Airquee is ever committed to bringing you your high quality inflatables as fast as possible whilst retaining excellent working conditions – incidentally as Airquee has grown extensively over the last 5 years it has become THE place to work and people have even relocated to Sfântu Gheorghe to work for us! How great is that?

Just one of the many metres of work tables | Airquee 1

In order to provide you all with inflatables which are compliant with the BS: EN14960 standard, we have two more RPII certificated Inspectors in Romania! Quality and safety are important to Airquee and we make sure the units sent out are as safe as possible with corresponding paperwork.

Mark John presenting Lori with his certificate and badge – Kerry on the side-lines looking proud

In slightly tangential news, Kerry seems to have attracted all the local stray dogs and a cat during the Romanian visit! Not only has she encouraged them in to her Romanian home she has also literally had them following her on her morning walk to the office!  I think it won’t be long before we open Airquee Rescue for all animals without owners over there….

Kerry with some of the local dogs

Spring Arrives and TV Time!

Easter week is already here and we are now officially in spring - it will be the Summer Holidays before you know it! It’s amazing how fast the year has flown by and with sun occasionally showing its face here in Wales, and reports of a hot February being on the news, we can feel it’s going to be a fantastic summer! As ever, we have been changing the stock in our showroom, allowing our constant stream of visitors to experience something new, with customers ordering from Airquee stock and our e-Range fuelling this constant shift.

Last weekend we were lucky enough to have two of our pool inflatables on BBC Sport’s Relief! Anton Du Beke and Kevin Clifton from Strictly Come Dancing were challenged to climbing over the Double Trouble and Eliminator aqua run style pool inflatables. Images on our website might not show the challenge of these units but you can see for yourself that it isn’t as easy as it looks! This was an excellent example of how Airquee have designed and manufactured many units, and our huge catalogue of pool inflatables contains some designs which could be exactly what your pool needs!

We’ve also recently had some of our best critics visit the showroom – children! A relative of a member of staff, who happily tested out all the inflatables.  She certainly enjoyed all the different themes of the e-Range units we have inflated ready for any visitors to come witness, and is testament to how excellent our units truly are!

Celebration of Staff and Showroom Demonstrations!

Another week has passed and here’s more news of what’s been happening at Airquee! First thing though, for those who weren’t aware, this Tuesday was International Woman’s Day! Airquee has a fantastic and diverse team and we wouldn’t be able to give you the service and products we do without the contribution of the amazing women we work with, both in the UK and in Romania – thank you all so much! Our warehouse staff – Kris and Jacek – were kind enough to show their appreciation by buying every female member of staff a box of sweets.

As has become the norm here – no, not Norman the dog! – we have had more visitors see our range of products in our Showroom for themselves. Kerry and Sol were demonstrating our craftsmanship with an Inflatable Hot Tub Wedge, which is certainly bigger than you would expect, even having seen the dimensions! To demonstrate perspective they were kind enough to pose next to a full inflated one – you can even see it comes half way up the height of an Energy Assault Course!

Looking ahead to summer, sunshine and some nice weather, we have been hard at work designing fantastic new pool inflatables! You may have seen some images last week, and here are some more to whet your appetite (pun unintended).

Large Orders, Special Dates and Yummy Cakes!

It’s that time of the week again! It’s amazing how fast time is going by now. Busy as ever this week, our man in the warehouse, Leon, has been preparing some huge orders ready for dispatch. There are a whopping number of items he’s prepared which are all going to Ireland! No time to rest though as that is just one order when there are so many more to send out. It’s thanks to all our wonderful customers that we have been so busy so early in the year!

Speaking of the time of year, we had a small break this week for St. David’s Day, and were treated to Welsh cakes! Small break, delicious snacks and we were back to using our ‘grey matter’ to come up with even more new and exciting designs – Airquee’s ingenuity never has time to rest! We’ve got new products for both pool and land, so watch this space to see some exciting things!

Another exciting date passed this week, Wayne has been at Airquee for a full year! Time sure does fly, and he is so full of knowledge when advising customers you wouldn’t believe he has been here such a short time. The calibre of Airquee shows how committed we are to giving you all the information you could want on our products! In order to mark the occasion, we were treated to even more sweet snacks – it was all gone before a picture could even be taken! I think we’re going to have to start burning those excess calories by testing out some of our bouncy castles. 

2016's Flying Start!

Friday is here again, phew…  in one respect we are grateful as we are having the luxurious problem of being overrun with orders which means we are ALL shattered – Bring on the WEEKEND!!!  Thank you to the incredible success of all of the Shows we have exhibited at since September last year and including the huge number of customers placing orders at INPAS, our ROI Show with Bounce Ireland, and our Airquee Northern Ireland show it’s been an outstanding start to 2016 for us and the constant innovation Airquee brings to the industry has made us more popular than ever.  It sounds like a cliché but we are a victim of our own success – what a posh problem to have!

Speaking of the Northern Ireland Show, we had a fantastic turnout of both new and returning customers looking for the next best thing and we want to say our thanks again to everyone who visited! It was a great opportunity to catch up with everyone and Ollie, one of newest recruits to the Sales Team attended and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  Phil H, Mark and Ollie from our UK office, along with Erika and Tilda from Romania! They were on hand to answer all questions from the streams of customers who visited to see all the units inflated at Cooley Castles Play Barn.  It is worth knowing that the Play Barn is constantly in use and could be visited at any time so let us know if you want to pop along.   You don’t need me to keep repeating myself as I am sure you’ve all seen our post on Facebook! If you haven’t then make sure you ‘like’ our page so you don’t miss out on our news! 

We’ve come up with so many new products recently; it can be easy to forget that we have a huge catalogue of products we’ve designed. Make sure you check out our vast products on the Airquee website to see for yourself the large array of product sizes, themes and types!