Coverstar Canada expands in Okanagan, keeps growing

Coverstar Canada brings innovative its business to Okanagan, continues to flourish Coverstar makes pools safe It started off humbly, as many things do, out of a basement office and an owner’s garage. The foundation of the company was a belief that every pool should be safe, and that an excellent product combined with excellent service would be a key to long-term success in the pool industry. With that in mind, Coverstar Canada was established in 2004 in Surrey. The goal was to provide automatic safety

covers for swimming pools to the local market, with a dream to one day expand to other locations nationwide. At the time, automatic safety covers were relatively unknown in the Canadian market. Pool safety was on everyone’s mind as the popularity of backyard pools grew, but the automatic safety cover was a new idea to most. The idea was simple: a vinyl cover that runs in tracks down either side of the swimming pool and is pulled on and off by a motor. If it

was built into the pool during construction, the tracks and the motor could be tucked away under the deck, or it could be installed on existing pools on top of the deck. Once installed, simply holding a button or switch for under a minute would seal off the pool completely, making it safe for children and animals. Because the pool was completely sealed, there wasn’t the usual loss of water, heat and chemicals that comes from an open pool, which saves a lot of money

over time. The first step for Michael Buckingham—founder and still CEO today—and his business partners, Bruce Greenough and Mike van Zanten, was to lock down an excellent product. When exploring brands of automatic safety covers, the team quickly settled on the Coverstar brand of cover, which has the most robust cover and mechanism in the industry, along with the best warranties. The company became the exclusive distributor for the Coverstar brand in Canada and took on the name Coverstar Canada. With that taken care of,

the team began to focus their attention on providing excellent service. “Our installers undergo rigorous training in order to ensure they do an excellent job of installation, and we also train them to treat our customers with the utmost respect,” Buckingham says. “Many of those installers have been with us for years, including a handful who have been around for over a decade.” As the business grew in the original Surrey location, trips to Kelowna and the Okanagan Valley quickly followed. With such a high

concentration of in-ground pools and so many people moving into the area, the Kelowna area was a booming market for new pool builds and auto covers. For many years the company sent install and service teams up and down the Coquihalla to work on covers. Eventually, Coverstar Canada was sending installation teams every week for up to three days from the Surrey office, which is when the owners knew it was time for expansion. Kelowna’s pool scene was growing and thriving, and Coverstar Canada had

to respond. In 2022, the company opened a location in Kelowna to provide even better day-to-day service to customers in the area. Over 20 years on from a basement office and an owner’s garage, Coverstar Canada has grown into a national company based on those core principles of providing safety to pools with an excellent product and excellent service. With warehouses in Surrey and Kelowna in B.C., and two more in Mississauga, Ont., and Montreal, Coverstar Canada is the only Canadian owned and operated auto

cover company that supplies the entire country with automatic safety covers. The company has sold and installed thousands of covers across the country. As the business enters the 2026 pool season, there are now more than 60 staff members across the country, with dedicated sales, service and installation teams in each location so that there is always someone to answer the phone and always someone available to assist customers. Out of the Kelowna location there will be four teams of technicians on the road this

summer, as well as dedicated office staff. The warehouse is stocked, and the company is well equipped to provide Kelowna and the B.C. Interior with the best products and services for another year. “I’ve worked on every brand of pool cover in my 13 years with the company,” B.C. Interior and Alberta regional sales manager Dane Jaeger says. “The Coverstar brand stands out because of its strength and thoughtful design elements that make it a top-of-the-line product. Even the cover material was designed to last

longer than other covers out there. It is the most user-friendly system for pool owners as well.” If you are looking for a reliable company that has a great product and a long history of investing in and serving Kelowna, don’t miss out on Coverstar Canada. Whether it be a cover cleaning, an adjustment to the tracking of the cover, a new install or the replacement of an old worn out cover fabric, they are poised and ready to serve you. More information about Coverstar

Canada can be found on its website here. This article is written by or on behalf of the sponsoring client and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.

Coverstar Canada, automatic safety covers, pool safety, Kelowna, Okanagan, Surrey, B.C. Interior, pool installers