How Central Washington Pool & Spa Passed $10M in Total Revenue in Six Years

How did Central Washington Pool & Spa start?

Josh Figueroa got into pools because he needed a job. He spent about five years at a pool company in Yakima, Washington, alongside the man who is now his business partner. The two had not known each other before, and they came to the same conclusion: the local industry was fractured and they could do it much better.

They left at the tail end of 2019 and started Central Washington Pool & Spa out of the single-car garage of Josh’s old duplex. “The American dream, right?” he said.

Josh recommends working in the trade first. He grew up with a pool, but automation, chemical management systems and the range of situations in the field had to be learned boots on the ground.

The local competition was not friendly. Most of the other companies had been around for 30, 40 or 50 years, and Josh describes a lot of animosity between them. The exception was a company Josh calls probably the biggest pool builder in the area, which helped the new company place orders before it had its own distributor connections.

What did COVID do to a brand-new pool company?

It helped. The company started just as COVID arrived, and Josh thought they “might actually be cooked.” People did not want anyone knocking on the door to hand over a flyer.

But more people were home than ever, working from home and spending time in backyards with pools and hot tubs they had not thought about in a while. The calls came in, and it was, he said, “just a boom for us.” Revenue through the end of 2020 was $350,000.

What does the company make its money on?

Maintenance. Central Washington Pool & Spa is full service: automation, heaters, filters, pumps, automatic pool covers, safety covers, pool restorations and hot tubs. The one thing it is not doing right now is building pools. Recurring pool and hot tub maintenance is the bread and butter.

“A lot of companies, I feel like, drop the ball on maintenance because they might either see it as below them or too easy,” Josh said. He treats it as the place to stand out on quality, and takes his crew to school once pool closing season is over to learn the latest equipment.

What marketing worked for a new pool service?

Door knocking and flyers first, then postcards. Josh says they were new to marketing and made plenty of mistakes. Radio did not bring much. “Good old-fashioned postcards” did.

Targeting made the difference. They could pull the pools in their area, narrow the list to people who owned the home and made over a certain income, and send an offer matched to the season: pool openings, closings, hot tub maintenance, repairs. The goal was customers who could afford the service and would stay for the long haul.

One mailing failed completely. A hot tub offer went out on about 1,400 cards and nobody mentioned it once. Josh thinks the deal was so good that people did not believe it was real.

Reviews are the newer channel. After the company began automating review requests, it went from about 60 Google reviews to 134, which Josh says is the most in town.

How does a pool company in Washington handle the off season?

About three quarters of the pool clientele drops off when pools close. At the time of the interview the crew was closing about 30 pools a day. Four things fill the gap:

• customers closer to Seattle, where it does not get as cold and some pools run 365 days a year
• hot tub maintenance, and service for vacation rental homes in the mountains
• hot tub sales, including Caldera, Jacuzzi and Wellis
• a few pool renovation projects, done over the winter and ready for spring

Why open a second location?

Because the customers were already there. The second storefront, opened in 2025 in Cle Elum, is about an hour and a half from Yakima in an area the company was already driving to for service routes. It is a high-end vacation rental market where people from Seattle buy second homes. Customers wanted a local place to test their water and pick up chemicals, and the hot tub brand Caldera wanted a second location too.

Six years in, the company has 19 employees, two storefronts and a main warehouse, and has passed $10 million in total revenue. Next on Josh’s list are more e-commerce, more locations and a bigger crew, without letting service quality drop.

What is Josh’s advice for growing a home service business?

Be relentless, and decide quickly. It was not always $2 million or $2.5 million a year. “There were dark times. There were negative bank account times for the business,” he said. What got them through was continuing to make the next move.

“Most companies move as slow as the decisions are made. Not every decision is going to be perfect or correct, but the decision needs to be made.”