Poolwerx achieves record sales despite Covid pandemic

Former soft drink salesman John O’Brien started with a single pool shop in suburban Brisbane nearly 30 years ago. He now runs a $200m global firm.

CEO and founder of Poolwerx, John O’Brien.

Former soft drink sales executive John O’Brien started with a single pool shop in suburban Jindalee on Australia Day, 1992. He now runs the $200m Poolwerx empire that is benefitting from a return to the backyard during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Pool construction is now back to 1970s levels with 40,000 a year being built throughout Australia,” says O’Brien, whose mum gave him $20 after he left high school and told him to make his fortune.

“We have never sold so many pool robots and heating systems. The Australian backyard was almost dead but people are cocooning and the backyard has become a focus for the family.”

O’Brien says Australian home builders are now offering house and pool packages for the first time as the focus on lifestyle comes to the fore during lockdowns.

“House and pool packages are common in the US but now major builders are doing the same here,” he says.

Brisbane-based modular pool manufacturer Plungie formed an exclusive partnership earlier this year to supply their prefab splash pools to Australian home building giant Metricon.

O’Brien, 64, says businesses such as Poolwerx and retail giant Harvey Norman have seen increased investment in home entertainment and lifestyle additions during the extended lockdowns that are still afflicting most of the country.

“I think it is a cultural change that is here to stay,” he says.

Poolwerx founder John O'Brien. Picture: Supplied

Poolwerx’s sales across its 160 retail outlets and 600 mobile vans in Australia, New Zealand and the US grew 11 per cent last financial year.

O’Brien says he was inspired to start Poolwerx when he travelled to California in the early 1990s and saw most pools were maintained by mum and dad operations. “We are now a $200m business, achieving increased sales growth every year except 2010 when we were coming out of the Global Financial Crisis,” he says.

O’Brien says the business has grown from small beginnings in suburban Brisbane to become what is now the world’s largest global franchise pool service firm.

“My mum was a bar maid who managed to put me through boarding school and when I graduated she gave me $20 bucks,” says O’Brien, who learned his business smarts working for soft drink giant Cadbury Schweppes.

In 2015, Poolwerx moved into the lucrative US market bringing O’Brien face-to- face with something he had never struck before - alligators in pools.

“In Florida, we had to extract a baby alligator from one of our customer’s pools,” says O’Brien.

Alligators are not unusual discoveries in Florida swimming pools as the reptiles wander from their traditional home in the state’s wetlands to urban areas.

Fortunately the encounters with scaly beasts has not slowed the pool maintenance company’s push into Florida and other sunbelt states such as California, Arizona and Nevada.

“We are targeting the rich and the hot areas,” he said. O’Brien say the profile of the company’s franchisees was changing with many people seeking a complete break from the traditional corporate job.

In the early days, those coming into the business were often traditional blue-collar workers keen to get off the tools and into business, starting out with a van operation. Today’s franchisees range from the first-time business owner to experienced entrepreneurs who skip the mobile van stage and go straight into owning multiple territories with multi-million dollar turnovers.

In recent years, Poolwerx has seen several entrepreneurs come into the business without any technical knowledge. Some grown their footprint into multi-million dollar businesses. “People are looking at their office jobs and thinking is this what I really want to do for the rest of my life,” says O’Brien.