Preconceived notions are a tricky thing, especially in the business world. And regardless of whether we recognize it, we all tend to assume things from time to time. Gender bias is the tendency to unconsciously attribute certain behaviors to one gender. In the pool industry, it can tend to show up on the sales floor,…
Ana Manning, Co-owner and COOManning Pool ServiceHouston, Texas Ana Manning started at Manning Pool Service in 2012, four years after her husband, David Manning, joined the company. She says it was chaotic until she came on. One of the first things she tackled was restructuring the pool routes. Manning worked at Manning Pool Service part…
What a difference a year makes. This time last year, I had a weeks-old baby and never would have imagined sending my kindergartener to school wearing a mask. I’ll admit that I don’t love change. I like plans and stability. A year as unpredictable as 2020 was not easy for me to navigate. But what…
In 2019, New Jersey-based Hayward released the TriStar VS 950 variable-speed pool pump. Over the last two years, it was launched as a Super and MaxFlo pump as well. The latest iteration of this VSP family — the TriStar VS 900, informally referred to as generation-3 or gen-3 — was made available this October for…
In this time of great uncertainty, swimming pools are in high demand. The closure of many public pools, the disruption of vacation plans and people spending more time at home have meant pool builders are swamped with orders. Before the current health crisis, a good day of sales leads at Bi-State Pool & Spa in…
Rob Blake, senior product manager of NPT Pool Finishes – POOLCORP, based in Covington, Louisiana, says there’s no better time than now for pool servicers to jump into the pool remodeling business. After all, these companies already know what a pool needs — and what can make it better. According to a study of the…
Countless Commercial pools have been left reeling from the pandemic. Many public and hotel facilities have been shut down for months. Some have reopened at limited capacity and with heightened restrictions, but a number of them remain shuttered. With the effects of these closures trickling down through the industry, pool pros have been forced to…
The home improvement sector is slaying it. The pandemic has resulted in many people having more disposable income, and more time at home means the Honey Do list grows. Travel budgets have been reallocated to home renovations. I reached out to a few in the industry for an hour-long video chat in September: Jerry Wallace…
There are only so many ways to catch foot and motor traffic. Outside of full-size billboards, advertisement on service vehicles and signage at a company’s physical location, many companies use lawn signs. Lawn signs are a simple and direct strategy for advertising in the most visible area of a jobsite. Information as simple as the…
When Ravi Kurani’s father owned a pool company in Riverside, California, he’d tell his son about the frustrations pool owners had when their pool water was out of whack — and the tedium and frustration of water chemistry, logbooks, chemical calculations and follow-ups with pool treatments. Ravi Kurani sought a solution and, in 2015, founded…
This was supposed to be our first commercial-focused issue of PoolPro, and while much of the content focuses on the commercial pool sector, it’s much more of a mishmash than I originally intended. In this strange year, the residential market is booming but the commercial side remains mixed. Many public pools have stayed closed this…
*These responses have been condensed and edited for clarity. Dick Abare, CPC, ownerAlgae Busters Pool Service, inc.Tampa Bay, Florida ResidentialInstallation, Warranty and RepairEmployees: 2 I’m going to sound like a broken record, but LaMotte’s Spin Touch is amazing! The ability to run 10 tests within minutes makes us much more efficient. We use it primarily…