Our story | Heatable

Like any good business startup memoir, our story starts with two brothers, nestled above the sales office of an estate agency in North West England. Having realised the many failings of an outdated boiler buying industry during a particularly mundane trip to the local deli, they set out to change things.

Heatable brothers — Founders, Ben and Sam ~ 1996

We're a business. Family.

Evidenced here by a remarkably cliche throwback photograph, co-founders Sam & Ben have been conspiring to revolutionise the property sector since leaving their Run-D.M.C audition with an all too familiar different perspective on the matter.

Heatable family photo — Kristian, Paul, Ben, Sam & Steve - 2017

Heatable, assembled.

Having realised that waistcoats were the key to success, Sam & Ben took on a new brother, Kristian, worked closely with their more successful Father and attended an event in which a man named Paul couldn't be cropped out of the photo with any degree of accuracy.

After spending years in the world of property, we'd developed a robust dislike towards tradespeople. Well, not the people as such, but the time-consuming, laborious process to get a simple job, done - like replacing a boiler. Calling around, waiting around and getting messed around by pushy salespeople was not fun.

So, we set out to fix it.

We launched the first version of Heatable. v1.

A price comparison website where customers could get instant, fixed price quotes for their new boiler, from installers in their local area, without a salesman in sight. It was truly innovative, the first of it's kind.

Heatable v1 homepage — Heatable v1 Homepage - March 2017

It was a good idea, with good intentions.

Engineers

Customers

Go through our platform to get instant, fixed price quotes from boiler engineers in their local area.

Heatable

Takes a commission from engineers once they'd installed the boiler for the customer.

We started to grow

Took some office space

Our small, smart space in Newton-Le-Willows ~ 2018

Took on some staff

Team Heatable enjoying Amsterdam ~ June 2019

Took some selfies

Connor, our web developer ~ May 2017

Took some publicity

Heatable v1 featured in HVP Magazine ~ October 2017

Customers loved the concept

But it didn't work.

Turns out, engineers are great at fitting boilers, but not so great at admin and service.

They were so entranced in masterfully caressing new boilers onto walls that they would forget to call clients back, fail to update their prices to the surprise of a customer or simply, not show up - you've heard this one before.

We pulled the plug on Heatable v1, went back to the drawing board, realised we didn't have a drawing board - bought one, and sought to fix the boiler industry once and for all.

v2

We came up with a new plan, one that delivers. One where our customers get a world class user and customer experience, reassuringly low prices and quick, quality installations from engineers in their local area.