The Road Traveled

Just recently, I spent some time looking through an issue of WaterShapes published in 2003. I won’t name names, but one of the articles was about a custom installation that was labeled as “luxurious” – and I was struck by the fact that, by today’s standards, it wasn’t really anything very special.

Make no mistake: This magazine has had a great deal to do with advancing our industry, and I have no doubt that, six years ago, the project that caught my eye was at or near the cutting edge. Still, I couldn’t help thinking how far we’ve come in recent years and how long it’s been since just about any project that didn’t drop out of a cookie cutter was newsworthy.

As we all continue to cope with the toughest market in our lifetimes, I see value in looking back at how far our industry has come and how it has evolved. More important, I think it’s valuable to reflect on the value system that has driven this evolution so we can all prepare for a more abundant future with further advancement in mind.

As has been written before in many contexts, those who stay rooted in the past will inevitably fall behind, while those who look ahead will excel come bad times or good.

TEN YEARS AFTER

It was just over a decade ago that WaterShapes and Genesis 3 first set sail. As I’ve explained before, the timing was coincidental but extremely fortunate for both entities.

The co-founders of Genesis 3 – Skip Phillips, David Tisherman and I – had grown weary of the traditional pool industry and its approaches and very much wanted to kick down barriers and replace patterns of thinking that had constrained us and others who became our forward-thinking compatriots.

At that same time, Jim McCloskey and Eric Herman had something similar in mind and developed WaterShapes as a means of uniting the landscaping , fountain, pond/stream and pool/spa industries beneath a conceptual umbrella that explored water-oriented design and construction and celebrated the similarities rather than differences among water-oriented professionals.

Both endeavors were bold, and both ran headlong into the skepticism of people who at first didn’t understand the scale of these ideas.

I’ll never forget a breakfast meeting I had with Jim and Eric in New Orleans in 1998 when they asked me to write this column. Truth be told, I had no real idea where all of us were heading – but it seemed like a good idea at the time, so we all jumped in and gave it a go.

What’s happened in the years since we’ve all been at this continues to amaze me. Apparently, the pool industry was ready for a change, and it has been about much more than the successes of Genesis 3 or WaterShapes: Indeed, what we’ve seen is creation of a whole, new industry separate from anything that existed before, and we’ve watched with satisfaction as watershapers’ careers (and sometimes even their lives) have changed for the better.

It’s as though an emergent art form was waiting to be recognized back in 1998, and the energy and interest we unleashed came on like lightning.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that all of this came together during prosperous times when property values were soaring and homeowners had easy access to equity and credit – too easy, as we know with hindsight. But that supply of dollars sought out and found a class of creative people in our industry and drove many of us to higher and higher levels of ambition and inventiveness.

Those were heady times, and as I suggested just above, things cascaded to a point where it’s fair to say that an entirely new industry was born. Those of us who jumped in and successfully navigated the currents have never looked back. Even now in a depressed market, those who stepped up and learned to play an elevated game still see powerful demand for increasingly creative watershapes and exterior spaces.

LEFT BEHIND

As all of this progress and promise has unfolded, I have always been surprised and a bit distressed by how stuck in the past some people (particularly in the mainstream pool industry) seem to be. It’s as if there’s a fear factor that keeps minds closed and hands tied.

And they ensnared by the past despite the fact that their own prospective clients are pushing at them as hard as they possibly can to get caught up and back in the race!

As an example, I was recently called into a project where the clients told me that they had tried to work with a number of local pool contractors who brought nothing at all to the table beyond tried-and-true designs and materials. And this was true despite the fact that these clients were absolutely interested in exploring a broad range of technological options and visual possibilities.

I indulged their desires by covering a number of design ideas and material choices, listening all the while as these clients kept on expressing their relief and even surprise that they had finally found someone who was willing to join them for a bit of creative thinking. It was nice to hear, of course, but it was also disturbing because this was not the first time I’d heard this sort of complaint from clients.

I cannot rest easy knowing that there are situations such as this in which homeowners are looking for more than many people in the pool industry are seemingly ready or willing to offer. Can you imagine if this were the case with cars and you went to the lot wanting a luxury automobile, but all the dealer was willing to discuss with you was a limited selection of economy models?

On its face, that’s outrageous, self-defeating and palpably insane – and unlike the car industry, the pool industry apparently does this to our base of consumers often enough that all of us who want to do better need to overcome homeowners’ negative preconceptions before we can even get going.

There’s no wonder now that times are tough why some pool companies are going out of business. With limited creativity, they can’t exploit the opportunities that exist, let alone generate enthusiasm where those opportunities aren’t so obvious. As I see it, none of us can sit around and wait for consumers to lead us back to prosperity – and things will only get worse if, when they try, they run into pool people who balk at the chance to do anything creative.

If you’re reading this and are among those who have yet to embrace the value system these pages have always represented and Genesis 3’s programs have always espoused, you are playing a dangerous game these days: Old-school thinking will not carry you through this economic downturn and certainly won’t help you exploit the greater opportunities that are sure to arise when the economy recovers and pent-up demand is unleashed.

BASIC AND ADVANCED

The transition in thinking I’m discussing here exists on a number of levels, from basic technology and construction techniques to the farthest reaches of design creativity. It’s even occurred with the most fundamental of systems with which we work – that is, hydraulics.

Not too many years ago, the pool industry was stuck in a rut in which small pipes were paired with oversized pumps to achieve basic circulation. This probably had something to do with continuing to do things “the way they’ve always been done,” and there was definitely a marketing point being made, because what consumer would want a wimpy half-horsepower motor when the alternative was a burly monster checking in with two-and-a-half horses?

Nowadays, I think the battle about pipe and pump sizing is basically over and there’s broad recognition that big pipes and small pumps offer tremendous hydraulic and safety advantages. There may be some who will stick with the old approach to avoid having to admit they’ve been wrong for all these years, but whatever the case, I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would resist such a basic advancement in understanding of a science that’s at the core of all of our installations.

On the other side of the spectrum are those who seem stuck on another planet with respect to what they consider to be “custom” or “luxurious” designs. Just this morning, I was flipping through the Spring 2009 edition of Luxury Pools, a big, glossy magazine that goes to consumers and includes projects pool builders pay to display. Overall, I think it’s a great concept and value the level of exposure it brings to some of our industry’s best practitioners.

In a number of instances, however, the pools featured are truly ordinary – not the least bit luxurious or particularly creative, even by past standards. This leaves me scratching my head and wondering where these people have been and what on earth they’re thinking. Some of these entries are embarrassing – which takes me back to my original point about the way the pool industry seems happy to let consumers lead the way.

I believe that it’s time to break with the past and for everyone who claims to be a watershaper on any level to reclaim a market-leading role by offering creative options to all consumers and refusing to accept old-school thinking. If along the way you happen to run into a client who actually wants something ordinary, it’s easy to back up and accommodate those wishes. But at the very least we should all commit to exposing them to ideas they’re unaccustomed to considering.

DO YOUR BEST

It’s not my intention to demean anyone through this discussion, basically because experience has shown me that even the stodgiest, most determinedly Old School among us can get educated and learn to embrace greater creative potential. We all have room for growth and improvement of our skills – and the sooner we grasp those opportunities, the better off all of us will be.

Just as we knew during fat times that things would eventually change, so too we know through lean times that things will get better and the economy will rebound. The question you need to ask yourself is, Will I be ready?

If you have worked at tapping your most creative intentions, then the answer is yes. If you’re wedded to the past, however, you can pretty much count on staying there until you wake up and see the choices you’ve always had to step up and begin anew.

Brian Van Bower runs Aquatic Consultants, a design firm based in Miami, Fla., and is a co-founder of the Genesis 3 Design Group; dedicated to top-of-the-line performance in aquatic design and construction, this organization conducts schools for like-minded pool designers and builders. He can be reached at [email protected].