Pentair Pool Europe announces the appointment of Maxime Guianvarch as Key Account Manager for France and welcomes Peter Dircx to the position of Area Sales Manager for Northern Europe and Eastern Europe.

Maxime Guianvarch, Key Account Manager for France

Having joined Pentair as Area Sales Manager for northern Europe in 2018 with a 15-year career in the swimming pools sector, Maxime Guianvarch is the ideal person to meet the challenges of this new position.

After obtaining a Master's degree in international trade, Maxime immediately entered the world of swimming pools - an industry that he has always been fond of and that he has never left. His responsibilities were primarily international: exports manager, UK manager, then northern Europe manager when he joined Pentair in 2018. When he was offered the role of Key Account Manager for France in 2022, he saw it as the ideal opportunity to advance his career, albeit in a domestic role.

The French market represents a new challenge for Maxime Guianvarch, particularly in terms of the management of sales channels. Indeed, his responsibilities will be concentrated on central purchasing bodies, networks and integrators with which Pentair has not done business before. This will involve putting a new strategy in place and establishing a new way of distributing Pentair products through new channels.

For Maxime, this is one of the key aspects of this new responsibility as Key Account Manager: keeping a constant eye on the market to be in the right place at the right time and seize opportunities in these new channels as soon as they present themselves. Maxime Guianvarch has already set himself ambitious targets in relation to certain large-scale French resources and integrators to whom he will be keen to promote Pentair. He is pleased that we trust him to implement this new strategy, and is very happy to be able to rise to this challenge!

Peter Dircx, Area Sales Manager for Northern Europe and Eastern Europe

Already in possession of years of experience at Pentair Pool Europe from 2010 to 2018, Peter Dircx is taking up his role of Area Sales Manager (Exports Manager) for Northern Europe and Eastern Europe again, at the head of a newly expanded team.

With a degree in Marketing, Peter initially worked for Pioneer Electronics in the distribution of hi-fi products, mainly in Eastern Europe. It was in 2010 that he joined Pentair Pool, as Exports Manager for Northern Europe (United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Benelux): we might add that Peter Dircx was on his own at the head of this important area!

This led to 8 very fruitful years, when he was particularly involved in the launch of the PIP programme in Europe, revolutionary at that time because it involved "first contact" with swimming pool specialists and vendors as well. He was also present at the launch of the first variable speed pump, a global Pentair exclusive at that time.

Next, after an intermediate period of 4 years when Peter Dircx led a team of 9 people at a global manufacturer of construction materials for the Belgium/Luxembourg region, he returned to his position of Exports Manager for Northern and Eastern Europe in 2022. The team has expanded and there are now 3 people under the wing of this experienced manager, endowed with a broad knowledge of vendors and swimming pool specialists in this region. His desire is to set up a real team spirit there, willingly acting as a coach at the service of his colleagues.

One of his objectives will be to ensure that vendors and swimming pool specialists will understand Pentair Pool products better, to price them in the best possible way and have them adapted to suit their customers. As a matter of fact, Pentair offers very high-quality, innovative and durable products, which can give swimming pool owners some genuine advantages, especially against the current ecological and economic background.

And this is ultimately where Peter Dircx considers the PIP programme as the backbone of his efforts: a centralised main structure for creating a community of loyal Pentair swimming pool specialists who are ambassadors for the brand, collaborating equally to gain better understanding of each product. An ideal vision that still has plenty of potential for development in years to come.