I don't sugarcoat things. I don't light a cigar and blow smoke rings about how “great” everything’s going. But I will tell you that it’s far from bleak. If you’ve been in this business for a dog’s life, you know what I’m talking about: The pool industry is chaos wrapped in plaster. It’s fragmented, regional, and unpredictable as hell. Trying to summarize it neatly is like trying to summarize a pool after a hurricane. Where do you start?
So, I asked around. Builders, service operators, retailers, manufacturers — you name it. I wanted to know where everyone’s head is at. I even took into account the 2025 performance of publicly traded industry organizations. But let’s be real: IBISWorld counts 89,046 pool cleaning businesses in the United States in 2024. What I’ve got here isn’t a survey, it’s an anecdotal vibe check. One lonely Pringle rattling around in a tube the length of the Lincoln Tunnel. But that single crunch? It tells you plenty. Because sometimes the small sounds say more than AI’s polished reports ever will:
The party’s over. For a few wild years, the “pandemic bump” had everyone living like they owned a Sandals resort, throwing money at their backyards like Cal Hypo into a swamp-vomit-green pool. That wave is rolling out to sea. Half the people I talked to say demand’s leveled off, nearly a third say it’s slipping, and one in five still see growth. That’s not a crash, it’s a hangover. The market isn’t dead; it’s just sobering up.
The deep-pocket baller’s still buying, but the middle class — for many, the cash cow — is having second thoughts. That tension stretches service companies thinner than a backwash hose in July: high-end clients want automation, data logging, and Wi-Fi everything; middle-market folks want the water blue and the bill painless. Juggle both and you’re the clown, the ringmaster, and the poor soul chasing the runaway Polaris, all in one.
"I really...prefer that we do some basic business classes for pool pros. How to manage your prices in a way that you actually make money...and when it's time to raise your prices." — Laci Davis of The Grit Game
JUGGLING FOR PROFIT
Here’s the headline nobody prints: We’re charging more and somehow making less. Nearly 60% of pros raised prices by over 10% last year, and another 31% raised them less than that. Yet almost half say margins haven’t moved, and 28% say they’ve worsened. Why? Because everything costs more — materials, chemicals, equipment, labor, insurance, trucks, tires — all of them eating profits faster than a suction-side vac swallows a dive stick. Hell, even your cup of coffee before the route wakes you up with a sticker shock.
Insurance? Might as well tattoo “Kiss Me First” on your wallet. Tires? You are one rusty roofing nail away from destroying your profit. Margins are thinner than the excuses I hear when someone double-doses algaecide. And every time prices go up, I hear the pitter-patter of little customer feet running to Walmart to buy Magic Erasers.
Customers are crying poverty — 61% of pros say it’s the new national anthem. You hear the chorus daily: This is expensive. Can we do it cheaper? Same route, same week, same song. Next time, you should start waving your arms like a conductor. This is expensive. Can we do it cheaper? They still spend, just more selectively.
Currently, only a quarter of customers finance their purchases; some pay cash, while the rest wait and hope that interest rates will fall. Innovative companies aren’t just quoting — they’re teaching economics. They show customers what waiting costs — month by month, dollar by dollar — until that “maybe later” turns into “should’ve done it last season.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
How the hell should I know, I’m a pool guy, not an industry analyst. But I have tarot cards, and I’m not afraid to use them. Here’s what they say:
- Big new tech and smart machines have shifted from shiny upsell to cover charge. Nearly half of the pros say customers will spend on controls, with energy efficiency close behind. This is just the warm-up: AI systems and connected equipment are already diagnosing problems before homeowners notice. Pumps text before they fail, heaters selfdiagnose — welcome to M3GAN in your backyard.
- Manufacturers are inching toward direct-to-consumer models — echoes of the HVAC industry — and the only defense is for us to get smarter, faster and better. A robot can schedule service, but it can’t sit poolside, chat about the swim meet, or know the family dog hates the leaf blower. That’s your moat.
- 2026 will look like your tailgate after a few years carrying sodium hypochlorite. Weather roulette keeps everyone guessing. Margins stay wild. Shipping might calm down, but insurance and labor costs continue to rise like a rocket. Winners don’t play price hero; they nail first-time fixes and route smarter.
- Customer financing begins to morph into autopay bundles — services, chems, inspections all rolled into one “keep it blue” subscription. Builders and retailers will bake multi-year maintenance right into the sale.
- Water policy in the American SW gets tighter than tighty-whities two sizes too small. No-drain chemistry, recycling systems, and retention methods go from progressive to mandatory. “If all I need to do is take out cyanuric acid, or if all I need to do is lower the calcium hardness, there are ways of doing that without draining a pool… when they’re the right thing to do, then we can be smarter about how we manage our resources,” says Que Hales of Pool Chlor.
- By 2030, it’s Poolmageddon. The old ways are dead and buried somewhere under a pile of cracked portavac parts, faded invoices, and the faint smell of burned-out techs who swore “this year would be different.” The industry isn’t dying — it’s evolving into something different. Something unrecognizable. Equipment talks now, tattles on you, runs selfdiagnostics, and might even order a pepperoni pizza via DoorDash while you’re still trying to find the leak.
- The survivors aren’t the ones with shiny trucks and matching polos — they’re the ones who learned to speak fluent AI pump before breakfast and stopped pretending the cloud was just something that ruined a perfect pool day. Meanwhile, the “I liked it better in 2004” crowd is still out there (be warned: This is the same group of pool pros that still complains Jersey Shore killed MTV), wandering the wasteland with cracked test kits and tans that stop abruptly at the ankles, their blinding white “panda feet” glowing like radioactive warning signs.
- Wildfire, hurricane, flood response becomes a pool tech profession in its own right. Cleanup, remediation, and restoration becomes its own highly specialized, highly romanticized niche, and gets its own mini-series on Hulu.
Meanwhile, down in the trenches, efficiency isn’t just king — it’s a mean, alum-wielding monarch with acid burns and no patience. He doesn’t wear a crown; he wears a sweat-stained “What the Floc” hat and carries a tele-pole like Excalibur. Cross him, and you’re banished to the Land of Eternal Callbacks, where techs wander muttering about the chlorine and toilet paper shortage from half a decade ago.
To survive, you wring every ounce of value from every route like the last dab of lube in a toothpaste tube. Route density is survival. Profit lives in first-time fixes. Guard your unicorn techs like the neveropened Evil Knevel Stunt Cycle you have, the original from the 70s. Price hikes won’t save you — customers already view invoices as a form of witchcraft.
“What I’ve been working on doing is asking more questions…to provoke thought as opposed to making statements. If you go through life accepting the minimum, your life will be minimally acceptable.” —Kevin Post of Councilman Hunsaker
STEADY AS SHE GOES
Take all that with a grain of sodium chloride (I’m only 80% sure about the mini-series) but all joking aside, it doesn’t take mystical divination to see the truth: The boom’s over. It’s not a crash, it’s a reset.
The way forward isn’t waiting for another tidal wave. It’s running a tighter ship, training people who don’t waste time relocating the spider they just netted from the pool, embracing technology that eliminates callbacks, and delivering value that even penny-pinchers respect.
The vibe is steady. The mission: stay steady, too. Consistency isn’t sexy, but it pays the bills. That’s what keeps your name trusted — and out of Facebook rants. The market’s already voting. Distributors with scale are “fine until proven great.” Manufacturers earn redemption one quarter at a time. Specialty retail? It’s all about proving viability before volatility eats you alive.
When the D.E. dust settles, the ones still standing aren’t the loudest. They’re the most consistent.
This article first appeared in the November 2025 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.
