Cool Designs parts company with Panasonic as growth powers ahead with Toshiba and CIAT

Cool Designs has terminated its distribution agreement with Panasonic as part of its ongoing strategic growth plan. It follows a record year of sales for the company, focused mainly on Toshiba and CIAT equipment. The agreement with Panasonic terminates at the end of this year.
Alongside the streamlined product line-up, the company is moving in January to a new head office alongside the River Tyne in Gateshead, giving an additional 10,000sq ft of warehouse space to further improve stocking levels and providing a further 3,000 sq ft of office space.
The new location includesa trade counter and an enlarged air conditioning training centre, to cater for increasing demand for the company’s high quality technical training courses for installers and service companies.
Darrel Birkett, CDL’s founder and managing director, said: “It has been an outstanding year and we have continued to increase sales, driven mainly by the new technology roll-outs by Toshiba and the recent addition of CIAT to our range.
“The move to new larger premises will give us the space to grow for the future, and allow us to continue to develop our service to our expanding customer base that is one of the key elements of our success.”
On recent market developments, he said: “We have seen a big swing towards R32 as Toshiba’s Digital Inverter range has come onstream, while the VRF market remains strong due to Toshiba’s class-leading efficiency, reliability and installer-friendly technology.”
In addition to continuing steady growth in VRF and R32 equipment, one of the biggest areas of expansion for CDL is in applied equipment. This has taken offdramatically since the introduction of CIAT, andwith a combined DX and airside offering now covering all project requirements, the company sees this as a major growth opportunity for the future.
It has already helped the company win some major projects over the past year thatpreviously would have been out of reach, due to its Air Handling Unit (AHU) and Fan Coil-based offering. On the chillers side, CDL landed a large project in Newcastle for a major national airline which opted for a CIAT solution.
Geographically, sales growth has come from across the UK, with London and the south of England performing particularly strongly. To help support this going forward, the company is planning new hubs for training and stockholding to ensure service levels are maintained as the business expands.
On the training front, CDL continues to expand its popular online video training academy on YouTube, with some modules being viewed more than 15,000 times. Further courses will be added in future to address specific training needs, including end user requirements.