20 Years in Commercial Pool

Today I am talking to Andrew who is the territory sales manager at Speck Pumps and has a breadth of background working in pools, including commercial service. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it, Parker.

Yeah, I'm curious. Could you give a high level background? A lot of the listeners here will be people who service residential and maybe some commercial pools. I'm curious what your experience has been in that side of the industry. I know you work in manufacturing now and have done some lifeguarding in the past, but what has your experience been in the service side of the industry?

Right. So my background prior to Speck is for 20 years, I was with what is the largest commercial pool operator in the world. There's a number of branches throughout the United States and Canada. What we did is maintained, renovated, constructed, managed and did repairs for all commercial clients within a given area. In my 20 years, I started out literally acid washing pools and worked my way up to eventually become the president. My last five years with the company was as president. It was great. It was well spent 20 years of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's very hectic, definitely in an industry that can be very brutal at times. But that's what I chose, and I wouldn't change it for anything. I've learned more from working with swimming pools than I probably would have with anything else. The wide variety of skills that you pick up on a day to day basis is bar none way ahead of anything else. Think about electrical, plumbing, HVAC, management with people, revenue management, financial management, communication skills. These are all things that you have to master on a high level if you want to be successful. It was kind of make or break it on my way to becoming the president of the operation. But hey, it worked out, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

And overseeing the operation at American Pool, I have the rough idea of residential pools and commercial pools in my mind, but I imagine commercial is a lot more nuanced. Could you break that down for me? What is commercial pools and what did you at American Pool focus on?

Sure. With the commercial market, the commercial segment would include all of your HMAC - that's the term commonly used. Hotels, motels, aquatic centers, universities, condominiums, HOAs, institutional pools. Something where it is a public bathing place, meaning more than one family can use it. That can run the gamut from a 60,000 gallon small commercial pool at an apartment complex all the way up to a million gallons or more at a university. We focused solely in the commercial market. Within that, there's multiple subsets of the company. It's broken down into lifeguard management, maintenance, and then repair, renovation and construction. Three pillars, basically, of how that was operated.

What are things that would be interesting for residential pool service people to hear about the larger, more institutionalized section of the industry?

There's definitely nuances to every aspect of this. For some parts of this, I would not envy a residential guy. I know what customers can be like, how finicky they can be and how upset they can get. Having to deal with homeowners is sometimes much worse. When people are upset and angry, they get personal and can be mean. On the commercial side, they for the most part keep it more professional. From what I've heard from coworkers and others that work primarily in the residential side, it's very cutthroat. People can be super mean and super personal.

There's an overlap for sure. A residential pool is just a smaller commercial one, or vice versa. You have a vessel with water in it that needs to be chlorinated, sanitized, circulated, and needs to look good for people to get in. It's just scale. But definitely more nuances on the commercial side as far as requirements for insurance and licensure. There's a lot of things we do commercially that may not be done residentially, like lab testing. Bacteriological lab testing in most places has to be done weekly to make sure the water is safe. You wouldn't see that in a backyard pool. Circulation rates and turnover rates in a commercial pool are usually 24 hours a day. There's not really any room for variable speed pumps for the most part in the commercial market because you have to be running full bore, wide open, 24/7/365 that the pool's open.

When you're working with an HOA, who is it usually that you're selling to - the board or the property manager?

That's exactly right. With an HOA or COA, there's a board, and the board will accept multiple bids from vendors. Usually narrow it down to three and then interview those three vendors to see who ultimately gets the work. For apartments, kind of the same thing but there's no board. You have a single property manager who's usually responsible for making that decision. They may or may not go with the best price - they may go based on relationship or feelings, past experience. There's a lot more that goes into the winning of contracts and maintaining of contracts on the commercial side.

Are there any common mistakes that someone just getting into commercial pools would make in the bidding process?

How long do we have? There's a ton. The most important thing is to ensure that you are bidding apples to apples with either the bid they currently have or the others they're looking at. There's a lot of nuances in commercial contracts, and you have to be adept at reading them. If you're an outlier in pricing, often you'll get tossed. They just figure you did something wrong and don't even give you a chance.

Number two is really ensure that you have the correct insurance and correct licensure. Sometimes the local health department is more stringent than the state. Oftentimes, people's bids do not include requirements from the municipality. Usually that's in regards to lab testing and chemical testing. Some municipalities are okay with testing twice a day, but certain ones require testing every hour. That obviously drastically increases the cost of your contract.

The other thing you got to look for is chemical inclusions. Are you including all chemicals or just chlorine and acid? What if the pool has to be drained and cleaned? Is shock included? Are you including test reagents? If there's a bacteriological testing failure, who's paying for the resample? Lockboxes - who's paying for the lockbox? All these little things seem trivial, but they add up quick. I've seen many people try to break into the commercial market and end up giving up after a season or two because they just lost a ton of money.

What are the prerequisites for someone in residential looking at commercial?

It's going to depend on the municipality and the state. At the minimum, obviously you want to have a CPO or something similar. In Pennsylvania, you have to have a pesticide applicator permit, which is a fairly difficult test for most people to pass. Certain townships require OSHA training - the 10 hour or 30 hour. There are things like proper badging of your trucks, hazmat ratings. Residentially, you can kind of get away with carrying a lot of chlorine and slapping a sticker on the side of the truck. Commercially, you have to have your business unit and HAZMAT registrations on the truck. There's certain rules about places you can park, places you can't park. Often people find out the hard way by getting tickets or fines.

How large was the operation when you were president of American Pool?

From seasonal employees, including lifeguards, we would blossom to almost 500. Running 160-some lifeguarded accounts, generally it's like 2.75 bodies needed for each shift. The six month count - people we bring on the first day of April until winterizations are done - was probably about 35. Year round employees was about 16 or so. We were really family. Most of the employees that worked their way up started out as lifeguards or pool cleaners. We try to promote from within. You got to be a glutton for punishment to love pools. It seems like no one gets into aquatics on purpose, but once they're in, they kind of stick.

What skill sets did you need to develop going from being a lifeguard to managing other people?

That's a great question. More often than not, promotions happen but the training needed to be in that new role is kind of an afterthought. It's like flying by the seat of your pants or learning as you go - on the job training. I made a number of mistakes in my management and in the business, but from each one I learned. I remember looking at a balance sheet financial statement and being like, I don't know what I'm looking at. Literally there were times that I was using YouTube to try to figure out what certain things meant and how to put them in the books.

The learning curve when it comes to becoming more professional is high, but it's needed. Luckily, there's a lot of tools that can help people narrow that learning curve. Even a single pool guy has to worry about inventory. What are you carrying in your truck? What do you have at your house, at your garage? All those things are cost of doing business. Are you correctly billing for time? Are you monitoring your time? Are you using GPS software to make sure you're taking the most advantageous route? A lot of these things becoming more commonplace in the residential market are things we've been thinking about for years in the commercial game.

Tell me about the flood you worked through.

There was a stream that ran behind our office, about 100 yards away. One day early in the summer, there was a terrible rainstorm. We didn't know what was coming was what they described as a 100 year flood. As it got around 3:00, I noticed the parking lot was filling with water. About an hour later, the water was coming up even faster. I quickly told everyone to grab the computers, put them up on their desk, and head out if they were parked in the lot. Within about 10 minutes, the water had fully breached the stream. We found out later there was an earthen dam at the top that was slowly breaking.

After everyone got their personal vehicles out, I grabbed every set of keys I could find to get all the work trucks out. I was successful except for one - one of our service tech's wife's car that I didn't recognize. It had the sunroof open and completely filled with water. There was fish and trout. Total loss. My own vehicle too - I got it to higher ground, but it was the lowest because there was no room left. It got taken by the flood as well.

That's honorable, taking yours last.

It was like a Titanic type moment. The fire department came in inflatable boats and said, "Sir, it's time for you to go." I said, "No, you're going to have to make me." Eventually they did make me. Around 1 AM when the water receded, I went back. It was heart wrenching - basically everything ruined around two to three feet throughout the entire office had been soaked.

Obviously, the pool season being what it is, we couldn't stop. I made some calls and got a temporary office placed in the back, ran the electric, ran Internet cables, and basically worked either outside or in a small temporary office until the work inside was completed. One of our neighbors tried to drive out through the waters. She got into her car but couldn't even close the door before the water took the vehicle away. She was trapped. The only thing I could grab was a cheetah print lifeguard rescue tube hanging on the wall as a decoration. People always thought that was funny - that I rescued this woman with a cheetah print lifeguard tube.

How long did it take to get things back to normal?

We didn't lose a beat. That was a testament to the team. They were rallying behind me like no one else I had ever seen. The amount of discomfort everyone endured - for a while there was no air conditioning. It was probably about a month before everything got back to normal. But no one complained during that time. There's pictures of me where I had actually taken my desk out in the sun and used lifeguard umbrellas around it, just outside in the parking lot so everyone else could work inside that little air conditioned cubicle.

Now I'd like to transition to talking about Speck. Tell me about the company and the business.

Speck Pumps has been around since 1909 in Germany and Europe. They're basically equivalent to Pentair in the European market. The Specks were the first - they own the patent on the plastic pool pump. In the United States, Speck came over in 1983 and they've been thriving ever since. It's a small family run company, which is really neat because there's very few companies where you could call the CEO directly and get them on the phone.

They have a really great product and the price point is fantastic. People familiar with Pentair, Hayward, and Fluidra - they're good products, but they've seen huge price increases that have priced them out of the market for a lot of homeowners. Speck gives an option to get the same results, same flow at a lower cost. The warranty is far and above any that I've seen before. I would have been excited to deal with Speck on the commercial side because the warranty process is so easy and the warranty is much longer than you see with most other companies.

In my position now, I'm working with homeowners, service companies, builders, contractors. Not only to get Speck's name out there, but really act as support for the product. That's something that's been lacking from manufacturers. I offer to everyone using our products - if you've never installed one of our pumps before, I'll go with you. They think I'm joking until I actually show up. My truck is still loaded with tools. I'm always ready to go. My boots are always in the back. I put my money where my mouth is.

What have you learned working in manufacturing?

I've learned to be humble. Coming from the other side, I would ask things of our distributors and manufacturers that I didn't really care how they accomplished - they needed to get done. We had large enough buying power. Now on the other side, I see that sometimes it's not always possible. There's a lot of hoops that people have to jump through. Getting that 40 horsepower commercial pump to you the next day is a huge undertaking. I owe a debt of gratitude to all those people throughout the years that made those things happen for me.

What should pool service people understand better about manufacturing?

More often than not, people think of manufacturers as big business with no people involved. But there is. From this side of things, we're getting burned by tariffs just as much as anyone else. We do have sympathy for everyone. Prices are going up because the prices go up for us as well. It's not without thought. It's not to tear money out of people's hands. It's not to be gluttonous. Just like everything else in life, there is cause and effect, and we have to pass that effect down. We understand it's not fun for anyone to digest. We get it.

For people listening who might be interested in reaching out to you or Speck, how can they reach you?

The fastest way 24/7/365 is to visit speckpumps.com. If they email customerservice@speckpumps.com or call the factory directly, you'll always get a human. There's no robo answering there. The humans you get are people that can answer your questions. Depending on what part of the country you're in, they'll put you directly in touch with myself or one of my counterparts. We're happy to help with whatever we can do - after sales support, where to find something, product support. We're available through most major distributors. We've been around since '83, so we're out there at all the regular distributors. But you got to ask for us in order to get it. Next time you need a new pump, a swim jet, a commercial pump - think Speck.

Great. Well, thank you so much for your time, Andrew.

All right, great. Thank you so much for having me, Parker. I appreciate it.