Urban outfitters: some retailers consider a metro audience a hidden treasure. Are you in a position to take advantage of these sales?

Pool & Spa News, March 14, 2005 by Julie Sturgeon

Guess what's tucked behind a surprising number of those brownstones, apartment buildings and multifamily houses that comprise New York's neighborhoods.

Aboveground pools, of course.

In fact, homeowners say at least a dozen of these pools are in a single block of the Carroll Gardens section in Brooklyn.

The odds also are increasing that visitors to downtown dwellings will find a portable spa either situated inside or perched atop a rooftop deck.

Today's urban audience is a diverse mix of incomes and lifestyles. Some sections of a city may be largely populated by families of modest means, while others are designated as business meccas or artsy enclaves where more upscale urbanites gather.

These city dwellers still want the amenities of their suburban counterparts. That means retailers who sell aboveground pools or portable spas--and are willing to court this urban market--may find a welcome reception to their wares.

Come one, come all

Families form the customer base of Changing Seasons Pools-N-Spas in the Bronx, N.Y., says Lawrence Schneider, company president. Many are just married, have young children and are first-time homeowners--and they're receptive to fun ways to get greater use out of their limited yards.

"The aboveground pool mimics a more expensive product and is very affordable to the working class," Dean Salvane, manager of Bronx retailer Dizzy Deans Pool & Patio, told The New York Times last year. "Compare it to trucking the kids to the beach. You've got gas, tolls and food. Take a family of five to Disneyland, and guess what the little mouse is going to rip out of your pocket? About $6,000. You know what kind of pool you could get for that?"

Still, despite the fact that these two stores sit a few blocks from each other, more aboveground-pool dealers aren't exactly beating down doors to set up shop in the heart of the city. That's all right with Schneider. "There's not as much competition here as in the suburbs," he says. "That's why I opened my business 15 years ago, and we're still growing."

There's a reason for the dearth in Detroit, says Steve Bishop, president of Pools & Spas A-Go-Go in Berkley, Mich., a suburb 10 miles north of the Motor City. "We're on a bit of a comeback," says Bishop, who's sold only a handful of pools in the city proper over the past 28 years. "Most of the people who are moving back down there are younger, single or professionals.... There isn't a pool market with them."

That yuppie audience is far more suited to spas, says Dan Anderson, director of operations at TurboTubs in Naperville, Ill. He is thrilled to see Chicago's downtown convert its apartments back to their original row home status, and multifamily dwellings morph into single-family housing options. As in Detroit, folks buying these spaces typically have much higher incomes, are professionals and work patiently through a purchase--think professors, doctors, lawyers and executives.

"[They are] people who understand the value of a spa in their lifestyles," Anderson says. "There are a lot of installation restrictions, so they look for experts. They won't go out to the big-box retailers to buy products because there are a lot of steps that have to be taken into consideration. They come to us for our expertise."

Your order, please

Upscale urban residents like to stay and spend their money closer to home, according to Gwen Moran, a New Jersey-based marketing expert and author of The Marketing Solutions Handbook. "There's also a trend toward creating cleaner, more relaxing and less cluttered living spaces. This is largely due to the popularity of feng shui, but also because people are leading such hectic lives," she adds. "They're looking for ways for their homes to be more relaxing." It fits the spa environment like a glove.

So it's no surprise that Anderson's spa clients want the mother lode of amenities: TV sets, DVD players, stereo speakers, lighting and waterfalls. "This is not a customer coming in and buying a $3,000 spa," he reports. "They want to do some really high design type stuff."

But the sale requires a lot of handholding. In Anderson's case, that means an extensive interview of how they want to use the spa and what they envision for themselves five years from now.

"They realize after the initial interview that this will be an expensive process. So if you're not going to make it inexpensive, you need to make it quality-oriented," he says. It requires a lot of faxes, phone calls and e-mails. To make the sale as smooth as possible, he takes the lead in coordinating with architects and landscape designers to facilitate the process.

So it's also no shock that while the dollars do mount on these sales, the profit margin is only slightly higher than on his sales in the suburbs.

When it comes to families seeking the aboveground-pool option, "everything in this world revolves around spending money," Schneider says. These customers wander in through the door concerned about everything from the package price to installation fees and maintenance costs. At the same time, they're excited by the possibility of owning something they thought was impossible for their yard. Schneider combines both emotions to make his sales.