A heating and cooling company that has been running for over four decades has rebranded, changing its name to reflect shifting trends and climates within the plumbing and heating industry.
Custom Heat, which operates across the Midlands and South West of England, has this summer made the decision to change its name to Custom Heat & Cool, giving air conditioning equal billing alongside heating for the first time.
Earlier this year, Custom Heat reported a 462% rise in air conditioning enquiries compared with the previous year, as record-breaking heatwave conditions pushed homeowners to seek cooling alongside their usual heating systems. That shift has continued through the summer, and the company said the rebrand reflects a change that has already taken hold in its day-to-day work rather than a decision made overnight.
Lincoln Smith, Managing Director of Custom Heat & Cool, (pictured) said the rebrand had been a long time coming.
Mr Smith said: “We’ve been fitting air conditioning for years now, so it made sense for our name to catch up. When we saw the numbers earlier this year, it confirmed what we’d already been noticing on the ground, customers aren’t just asking about boilers anymore, they want to know we can keep their homes comfortable in the summer as well as the winter.
“It’s still the same team, the same engineers and the same way of working, we’ve built our reputation on doing right by customers for over 40 years and that’s not changing. But the name needed to catch up with what we’re actually doing day to day, because more and more of our work now is cooling as well as heating, and we didn’t want people thinking that was an afterthought for us. It’s as much a part of what we do now as the boilers ever were,” he added.
Every part of the business is covered by the new name, including the company’s South West arm, previously trading as Custom Heat South West, which now operates as Custom Heat & Cool South West. The company is the UK’s biggest Worcester Bosch installer and has fitted air conditioning systems for customers for several years.
Custom Heat was founded in Rugby in 1980 by Robin Smith, Lincoln Smith’s father, and has grown under Lincoln’s management from a small local heating firm into a business employing around 70 people across the Midlands, with a satellite operation in Cornwall. The company has previously set out plans to double its workforce as part of a wider growth strategy, with engineers, standards and family ownership remaining unchanged throughout.
Image: Lincoln Smith, Managing Director of Custom Heat & Cool (Image: Custom Heat & Cool)
