Five decades ago, in Newport Beach, Calif., Stuart Karl launched the progenitor of AQUA Magazine.
It was Southern California in the ‘70s, a time of dreams and exuberance. A new leisure product had come on the scene — the mass-produced, portable hot tub — and Karl saw the possibilities.
At that time, many people saw the hot tub movement as a fad that would last as long as the wild times in SoCal, and die with the next downturn; but Karl believed he was on to something. He called his new periodical, “Spa and Sauna,” and watched it grow over the years to become AQUA, the No. 1 pool and spa magazine in the world.
That first year was 1976 and the No. 1 album in the land was “Frampton Comes Alive!” If you were standing around Tim Turner’s pool with a bunch of gawky 8th graders, as I was, jockeying for position around the snack table, shading our eyes from the blinding pool light, the sound in your ears was Peter Frampton singing, over and over, “Oooh, baby I love your way.” Every day.
The party ended with us climbing up onto the pavilion roof and leaping off, clearing the deck, and landing feet-first in the deep end. It was an exciting time to be in backyard pools. The world and the aquatic industry was so young. Tiny companies were being launched by brave entrepreneurs — some thriving, some dying — by ordinary people who noticed the growing popularity of pools and spas, and thought to themselves, “I could build one of those.”
Building pools and custom spas in those early years was, as it is now, a unique engineering challenge every time you did it. Every yard and every customer was different. It required a variety of skills, including electrical, fluid dynamics, structural engineering and materials science. Bright, capable people simply liked that challenge; one day they accepted it, and the next thing they knew, they were in the business for life.
In a way, pools and spas grew up together in the late 20th century, and AQUA was there to take pictures.
And as often happens with siblings, the two industries matured in different ways. Pool builders, with bigger tickets and longer timelines, adopted a more serious demeanor, while their hot- tub brethren — the spa industry — became, by all accounts, a marvelous free-for-all of business neophytes, libertines, hippies soaking in wine barrels, napkin-sketch engineers, and hot-water gurus.
SOCAL SPAS
A term you hear over and over from the people who lived those early hot tub days is “wild west.” That’s because the people who were doing it mostly lived in the West (mainly California) and it was pretty wild.
One pioneer of those heady, frontier spa days was Len Gordon, a Southern California contractor. Gordon would later become a legend in the spa industry for the invention of the “air switch,” the forerunner of modern spa controls. In those early days, the industry was flummoxed by the problem of how to turn on the spa blower’s electric motor without using a fully live, potentially dangerous, electric switch. (The answer was simple — Gordon’s compressed air switch. Easy, once you think about it.)
Gordon's air switch.
As a builder, almost half of the pools Gordon built had attached gunite spas, Gordon later told AQUA, referring to the beginnings of the industry. He said he was building a fair number of these combos, but “building gunite spas with any real consistency was a very difficult thing to do.” As Gordon pondered the problem, his friend Jack Stangle had begun to wonder if a spa would work as well if it were made of fiberglass, like a boat hull. It seemed to Stangle it would be easier to make that way. Gordon was an idea man, and when he had one, he was relentless in pursuit. Always a daring entrepreneur, he jumped into the fiberglass spa business with both feet.
He rented some space at a nearby gas station and started popping out fiberglass spas. The process was simple: He’d spray a non-stick, separating agent (the manufacturing equivalent of Pam) into a mold, followed by gelcoat, and then fiberglass for structural strength. Gently pry it out, and it’s a spa shell.
These prefabricated spa shells changed the equation entirely. Gordon’s spa builders started using them. Soon everybody started using them.
“The fiberglass shell was a contractor’s dream,” Gordon said later. “All you had to do was dig a hole in the ground, and you were just about finished. It cuts the costs dramatically over gunite.”
It was, in many ways, the perfect product for the ‘70s. It had the right image — it was fun, sexy, and at a simple, basic level, reliably pleasurable. But it was the price that clinched the deal, Gordon said. “Everybody fell in love with it because it was something the blue-collar worker could now afford.”
GROWING PAINS
In terms of product quality and consistency, there were some serious growing pains. This was only natural with so many new businesses starting up, and so many new builders and installers on the market. There weren’t the standards we have today. There were hardly any barriers to entry for someone who wanted to jump in and start building. The problems were particularly noticeable on the spa side.
“What really held the industry back in those days were customers that had trouble with their spas,” Philip Horvath, president of Aqua-gon, Naperville, Ill., told AQUA. “Back then, product testing was usually done in the customer’s backyard. And a lot of the products simply didn’t work. So if a guy bought a spa and had trouble with it, that’s what he’d tell his neighbor.”
Probably the most notorious of the industry’s struggles were the surface problems that plagued spas in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. There were major issues with the gelcoat — cracking, crazing, delamination — but perhaps the worst problem came to be known as The Black Plague.
Come hither, circa 1980.
“You’d get these little blisters all around the tub that were black. It looked something like measles,” said Mike Dunn, former executive vice president at Watkins Wellness. “We were using the same kind of fiberglassing techniques as the boat people or even the fiberglass pool people use today, but the difference was the temperature and chemical concentration.”
It took a toll on the industry, with angry consumers demanding compensation and manufacturers at a loss to cope. The resulting warranty claims drove a number of manufacturers out of business, as did a brutal recession in the early 1980s, which drained disposable income from customer budgets.
The answer, of course, was acrylics. It took a while, but the industry made the pivot to acrylic portable hot tub surfaces, worked out the kinks, and never looked back.
Today, modern vacuum forming machines can produce an acrylic spa shell in a tiny fraction of the time it took to gelcoat and fiberglass a spa shell in the past, and of course, it wears beautifully.
SPAS – ‘80S & ‘90S
Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, the pool and spa industry was growing leaner and more professional. Companies were beginning to mature. The product had been around long enough for some of the manufacturing deadwood to drop off, and the industry had begun to get organized, with trade associations and better communications.
It’s hard to pinpoint a date, but sometime in the late 20th century, both the pool and the spa industry began to grow up.
“Manufacturers and products were becoming larger and more sophisticated,” remembers Dunn of that time. “Guys were going from garage shops, if you will, to factories.
Ed Fochtman and Fred Wagenhals with their newest acrylic model.
“My family business building had been about 10,000 square feet, and in the ‘80s, now we’re moving to a 55,000-square-foot factory on 5 acres. So it was that type of thing.
“Everybody is starting to scale up a little. And the product is advancing. And we’re trying to find ways to build spas more efficiently, add some features and still keep the price down.
“We’re moving from pneumatic controls to electronic controls. More jets. Designs of shells are starting to change — you’re starting to see protrusions into the tub, which are a little more difficult to do from a molding perspective.”
It was a time of great exuberance both in life and advertising. Note the sweet wooden barrel spa.
Coincidentally, this period was accompanied by a large increase in sales. “It was the maturity of the industry that really brought the growth. Losing the fly-by-night tag,” Horvath said.
“As the industry began to mature, the testing began to be done in the factory, where it really should be done. The product wasn’t put out onto the street until it had been perfected.”
More and more people, hundreds of thousands, were enjoying the leisure aquatic experience and passing along the word to neighbors and friends. As always, this was a very effective marketing technique.
“At the same time,” says Stan Chambers, 50-year industry veteran who has been there every minute of AQUA’s long, wild ride, “the public began to become educated on the products. As more companies began to design, manufacture, test and market more effectively, consumers became more comfortable with spending more for a pool or a spa.”
EASING INTO THE WATER
Customers cannot resist convenience. And it was convenience that ignited the portable hot tub industry. Convenience converted the hot water immersion business from a primarily inground, installation-focused business to an aboveground, truck-it-to-your-home enterprise. It was like the difference between building a walk-in freezer and buying a refrigerator.
“It changed the sale from a contract-type sale to a retail-store-type sale,” legendary retailer Alice Cunningham told AQUA. “It made the spa into a retail product that could be managed and stored and inventoried, delivered, and easily hooked up. And it became much easier to promote. It was a huge thing for the industry.”
“Before 1985, the majority of spas sold in America were inground,” says Jonathan Clark, former president of Jacuzzi Hot Tubs and Sundance Spas. “And from that point on, the market has been dominated by portable, aboveground spas.”
The convenience of the portables also meant a dramatic improvement in quality control, Clark adds. “It really helped the industry, because it had been dependent on somebody else to dig a hole in order to sell a spa. And these people weren’t plumbers — if a leak occurred underground, that was a real problem.”
It was convenience for everyone. What took time and hassle for the dealer, took the same from the customer. An increasing number of Americans had the money to buy a tub, but time and energy were in short supply. To them, the hassle-free soak sounded pretty good. No more waiting for weeks. And if they didn’t like the spa where it was, they could move it. Tying everything up in a neat little package made all the difference.
By 1988, according to Clark’s figures, spa sales hit an astounding peak of 280,000 units. It was the culmination of a remarkable period of growth. In the space of 20 years, the spa industry had grown from obscurity to an established position in the national culture. It was here to stay.
Magazine cover from December 1983.
POOLS – ‘80S & ‘90S
Then, as now, most pools were cementitious, but improvements were being made in the building of vinyl-liner and fiberglass pools which would lead to market growth. Builders also introduced features like raised beams, multi-level projects and vanishing edges.
One thing that particularly marked the ‘80s and ‘90s was the movement to make pools more “natural.” Exposed aggregate pool surfaces, instead of white plaster (or vinyl or fiberglass), were sold to pool buyers in ever greater numbers. Kidney, freeform, and curvy shapes, as opposed to standard rectangles, were an attempt to achieve a more natural appearance in the backyard.
And saltwater chlorination emerged as an “alternative to chlorine.” Of course it isn’t, but salt chlorine generators were marketed that way and began sanitizing U.S. swimming pools as early as the mid ‘80s. It would take decades before the compelling convenience of the machine — obviating the need to purchase, transport, store or add chlorine to pools — would make it a dominant fixture in pool equipment. (It’s like nobody really noticed that for about 25 years.)
Making progress parallel to the “natural” pool movement was the backyard resort movement. This included faux and natural rock formations and grottos, beach entries and lazy rivers, as the experience was modeled as close to nature as might be achieved with available, affordable materials.
And safety products, such as pool covers and fences, which of course had been around for many years, became more or less standard equipment for a growing number of backyard installations. Fiber optic lighting and dispersed, even illumination for pools gained popularity as an alternative to “train headlight” single source pool lighting, and electronic controls became an option for higher-end installations.
These and other technological advancements — in everything from pumps to heaters to surfaces and water features — led the way to a more efficient and enjoyable pool experience, but the technology that would really transform the industry more than any new piece of equipment was the computer and the internet.
The rise of the internet and the PC didn’t seem like much in the early ‘90s, with slow dial-up speeds and 64k RAM machines, but the impact on pool and spa businesses grew steadily every year. Soon CAD system design would replace T-squares, websites would replace brochures, management software would obviate filing cabinets full of papers, and eventually, the whole system would get “smart.” Even now, we see the first stirrings of the promised AI revolution.
TURN OF THE CENTURY
The dawn of the new millennia marked my first year as editor of AQUA Magazine. In one of my first stories, the national industry association (NSPI) finally settled the famous Meneely case, which had lingered for eight years. At the age of 16, Shawn Meneely jumped off a diving board in a backyard pool, arms at his side, and hit his head on the transition slope between the deep end and shallow end, causing a fracture to his spine which resulted in paralysis.
The resulting lawsuit bankrupted NSPI and triggered a Chapter 11 reorganization. In the process of paying off the judgement, NSPI was forced to sell its trade show, which is now known as the International Pool Spa Patio Expo, owned by Informa. The sale of the show would hobble the association’s finances for decades.
“While [the result of the case] is extremely disappointing, it’s nice to have it over with,” NSPI general counsel Dave Karmol told me in an interview. The industry wanted to focus on the unbroken stream of excellent sales reports that were stacking up, year after year, as a good product found a welcoming market in a sunny economic climate. With easy credit terms spreading throughout the land (generous home appraisals backing HELOCs up to full value), sales of inground residential pools in the first five years of the new millennium rocketed up to a record 776,000 units in 2005, and hot tubs reached a new peak of 400,000 vessels sold.
Amid this steady march to record sales, the 9/11 attacks shocked the nation, and the reaction of pool and spa consumers foreshadowed the response to an even more devastating calamity nearly 20 years later. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, with the nation reeling, airline traffic and destination vacations dropped dramatically.
For several months after the attacks, people called and emailed that they were seeing a boom in “staycations” — it was the first time I’d heard the word. “In the post- World-Trade-Center economy, people with discretionary cash are afraid to fly and will invest in their own backyards instead,” I wrote in November 2001.
No one at the time knew that America had taken Al-Qaeda’s best punch on 9/11. There was nothing else coming, and when America shook it off (and hit back hard), the travel vacation sector rapidly resumed its place in the leisure economy. The boom in orders for pools and spas was temporary, but the concept of backyard coccooning in times of crisis was established, and we’d see that again.
It took COVID’s complete shut-down of the economy and society nearly 20 years later to make the “staycation” a truly dominant economic force, which drove the largest surge in pool and spa sales in history.
EFFICIENCY IMPERATIVE
Throughout the epic journey of the pool and spa industry, even in Roman times, energy efficiency had always been a goal, but in the 2000s, that movement took on more importance, and it focused on by far the biggest energy user in the system — the high-horsepower, single-speed pump.
For decades prior, when selling a pool, builders would tout the high-horsepower pumps that would be included in a pool package in the same way a car salesman might trumpet the size and power of a Corvette’s V8.
But in the early 21st century, the industry was introduced to something called “The Affinity Law of Fluid Dynamics,” which stated in essence that running a pump at half speed required only 12.5% of the energy. That basically, you could move the same amount of water through a filter with a quarter of the energy and cost, if you just did it slower. Industrywide, we were about to start moving pool water slower, and to realize millions of dollars in savings as a result.
It took a while for the movement to catch on, but steadily it grew, as manufacturers gradually perfected variable-speed technology for pool pumps. California’s Title 20 energy efficiency standards gave it a huge push. The revolution culminated in the July, 2021 DOE regulations which all but banned sales of single-speed pumps.
2008 – THE GREAT RECESSION
As the worldwide financial calamity of 2008 recedes in the mirror, it’s hard to remember what it was like to see the leisure aquatic industry take a haymaker square in the face. To see 90% of the pool builders in Florida wiped out. To watch customers cancelling contracts en masse. To see annual nationwide pool sales drop by 70%, from 176,000 in 2005 to 54,000 in 2009 (source, APSP), and hot tub sales suffer a similar decline.
Retail traffic just withered like unpicked fruit. We kept looking for a ray of economic sunshine, and all we got was rain. The pool construction industry had been in freefall for nearly two years when I wrote in 2009, “It may be this fall, or next year or the year after that, but one day, the headlines will again speak of hiring and growth and prosperity.”
It was going to take much longer than I thought — the slow climb back to prerecession sales numbers. After being stung so badly, it took years for banks to start lending and homeowners to feel sure enough about the value of their own homes to spend freely on a backyard pool or spa. There just weren’t enough customers to go around.
In 2013, after five years of a staggering, stumbling economy, I asked Brian Van Bower if the recession in pool building was over, and he said, “No, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s behind us. I don’t think the middle of the market has come back yet... financing for work just isn’t readily available to large numbers of mid-range clients.” That year, 55,000 inground pools were sold in the United States, the figure virtually unchanged from 2009. It wouldn’t be until the latter half of the decade before sales began to climb in a steady, meaningful way.
Coinciding with the onset of the world-wide recession was the beginning of an era very particular to our niche industry — the VGB era. In 2008, the Virginia Graeme Baker Act took effect with the goal of eliminating suction entrapment injuries and deaths. The law proscribed that every pool drain in America be covered with an engineered, approved drain cover that would be unblockable by a human body.
The transition took years, but the implementation of such a sweeping piece of legislation was a real achievement for the pool and spa industry. It has undoubtedly saved lives.
The late 2010s were a time of steadily growing prosperity as the economy broke free of the shackles of recession fears. But on the industry-wide leadership front, a revolution erupted out of nowhere. Nobody saw this coming.
PHTA UNITES THE INDUSTRY
For decades, on the association level, the industry had been served by a dispersed and fractious group of organizations, led by bitter rivals at the national level by APSP (Association of Pool and Spa Professionals) and NSPF (National Swimming Pool Foundation). In the spring of 2019, these two organizations found the strength and courage to do the right thing for the industry as a whole, and merge. They were officially folded into one, called PHTA (Pool & Hot Tub Alliance). And Sabeena Hickman was hired to run the newly established association.
Hickman turned out to be both a visionary leader and consummate uniter, and over the next six years, she brought together not only the national and regional associations, but manufacturers and grassroots level volunteers from retailers, builders and service companies to produce far more cohesive and effective leadership for the industry.
At the same time, ever since the Meneely verdict forced the national association to sell EXPO, the national association was hobbled by inadequate funding. Successive association presidents said the industry would never be able to grow sufficient financial resources to support a truly capable national association. Hickman proved them wrong, and as a result, has launched a dazzling array of successful new initiatives to strengthen the industry and protect its interests.
As the third decade of the century dawned, pool and spa magazines and podcasters predicted a continuation of the steady economic climate which had marked the last five years. Even as those prophecies were being printed in January, 2020, headlines from a seemingly inconsequential story out of central China kept growing in size and urgency. And then suddenly, to everyone’s astonishment, COVID shut down the country.
THE PANDEMIC AND BEYOND
At first, many in the pool and spa industry thought their fate would be similar to other industries devastated by COVID. But an opposite dynamic would emerge. With the world avoiding public spaces, comfortable and pleasurable private spaces became paramount for consumers across the globe. And is there a more pleasurable private space than a backyard with a pool, spa, sauna and outdoor kitchen?
The same catchphrases and paradigms (“staycation” and “consumers coming home”) we saw in the aftermath of 9/11 were back, but this time ubiquitous and durable. At pool, spa and sauna stores across the nation, suddenly it was hard to manage all the calls and leads, and then it was hard to manage the supply chain, and then it was hard to manage a labor force that was dealing with no daycare and the new weird world where everyone wore a mask.
A great many things were hard to manage in the first two years of COVID, but manage we did, and companies saw record revenues as prices and project counts soared. As the world got back to something more like “normal,” the backyard rush tapered off, and by 2026, a new equilibrium was established. Overall, it left the industry at a higher level both in terms of status and revenue.
THE LAST 50 YEARS AND THE NEXT
Today, as health, leisure, wellness and connecting spaces grow in importance to everyday people, the modern pool and spa industry continues its ascent from humble beginnings. Those of us who have made it our work lives are lucky to have either been born into it or stumbled upon it, as I did. There’s something special about it, something about the people who sculpt and tend the vessels — these masters of water.
The early pioneers were builders and doers, people who took risks with limited funds and either saw them grow or lost them entirely, and went on to work for someone else. And the industry, even as it advanced in every direction and became more sophisticated, never really lost that spirit.
Magazine cover from May 2017.
It took two global events, COVID and the Great Recession of 2008, to take the industry to the next level. These two events took place 12 years apart and were fundamentally different — one was financial and one was strangely physical (with financial ramifications), but they both transformed the pool and spa industry for good in a relatively short period of time.
The Great Recession weeded and trimmed the industry and ultimately strengthened it for the explosion in demand that rode in with COVID. Weaker entities would have crumbled under the unbelievable stresses of the COVID years, as managing growth amid inventory and labor chaos pushed industry leadership to the very brink. But the industry that emerged and looks forward today is far more professional and capable.
That same spirit that inspired the founders lives on, as the next generation of leadership takes the reins from the old guard, the entrepreneurs of the 1980s and 1990s. The young guard stands ready to write the next chapter of pool and spa history as the next 50 years unfolds. AQUA will be there at every step with a camera and a notepad, writing it all down.
Editor’s Note: This recounting of industry events is limited by space considerations and not presented as exhaustive. Brevity required exclusion of many facts and incidents important to the growth of the pool and spa industry.
This article first appeared in the January 2026 issue of AQUA Magazine — the top resource for retailers, builders and service pros in the pool and spa industry. Subscriptions to the print magazine are free to all industry professionals. Click here to subscribe.
