APSP Quarterly - Spring 2008 - (Page 28)

as president. “When the board of directors hired me, they told me they believed the company had the potential at some future date to do $1 billion,” he says. “They asked me to make it happen.” Perez de la Mesa fashioned a forwardlooking vision and figured out how to make it work. Within five years, by 2003, PoolCorp revenues had passed the $1 billion mark and reached $1.2 billion. In 2006, revenues topped $1.9 billion. Perez de la Mesa had virtually doubled the board’s original goal and more than quadrupled the company’s 1998 revenues. Business visions aren’t mystical. They don’t just appear to CEOs. Visions emerge from studying markets, analyzing industry practices, searching for new ways to do things, and making and following a plan. That’s how Perez de la Mesa helped PoolCorp become a $2 billion company. Studying the Pool and Spa Market When Perez de la Mesa began studying t he pool market, he found an indust r y with tremendous long-term growth potential for pool builders. “There are about 112 million households in the U.S.,” he says. “Of t hose, more t han 70 m illion have the space and the economic capacit y to have some kind of pool – inground or aboveground. Yet only 12 percent have a pool.” Think what that means. If another 12 percent of the market buys pools, the pool building industry will double in size. Next, Perez de la Mesa looked at the market for maintaining pools. “Building new pools is important,” he says. “The more pools out there, the more need for maintenance, repair, and replacement products.” Perez de la Mesa likens the installed base of pools to an annuity that produces predictable revenue from service and sales of components. By building and installing new pools, the industry enlarges the annuity and its payout in terms of maintenance, repair, and replacement components. Analyzing Industry Practices In analyzing industry practices, Perez de la Mesa went back to fundamentals and pondered the structure of the industry. He considered the fact that the lion’s share of revenues in the pool and spa industry comes from maintaining pools and spas, repairing them, and replacing worn-out components. Professional service people operating thousands of small businesses across the country do the work. They work from homes or small shops, and they all need a reliable source of tools to work with and products to sell. Back in 1999, small private companies with limited capital dominated the pool and spa distribution business. By and large, distributors only sold products that pool 2 8366006_Aquasalt.indd R T E R LY | AQ A P S P Q UA 1 1/22/08 1:27:15 PM http://www.aquasalt.net

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of APSP Quarterly - Spring 2008

APSP Quarterly - Spring 2008 Contents President's Message Chairman's Message International Awards of Excellence Spotlight Quality and Innovation If You're Still in the Pool Business, You're Leaving Money on the Table Gunslingers for Sale-s Can Pool Builders Hedge a Tough Year With... Hedges? Creating a Shared Vision: An Interview with PoolCorp CEO Manny Perez de la Mesa Grow Boating Initiative Helps Industry Imagine a Better Tomorrow First Ever CBP of the Year Award Presented at Inaugural CBP Recognition Dinner Safety Department News & Resources Advertiser's Index

APSP Quarterly - Spring 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.