on Ludlow learned years ago that accidents happen in the blink of an eye. It was a bright, beautiful June afternoon when the Salt Lake City retailer/builder brought his 4-year-old son to a job site at a recently built condominium complex.
The boy was playing with a cap gun that his grandmother gave him for his birthday, just days before. So when it fell into the pool by accident, he wasn’t going to part with the toy easily. What happened next is every parent’s worst nightmare.
“I heard a splash, and the first thing I did was yell out my son’s name,” recalls Ludlow. “As I looked across the pool, I could see him floundering in the water.
“The lifeguard immediately dove in the pool and swam toward him,” he continues. “I ran around the other side of the pool and pulled him out just as the lifeguard got to him.”
Luckily, a tragedy was averted. His son avoided becoming another summer drowning statistic.
Ever since then, Ludlow has devoted his career to promoting safety products in the pool and spa industry. As president of Dolphin Pools, located in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas, and a member of the advisory committee for the Utah State Health Department for 16 years, he and other retailers have revolutionized the safety products market — and helped turn it into a multimillion-dollar-a-year industry.
The market has registered record-breaking profits within the last five years, according to retailers and dealers contacted for this report. Fueling the upsurge in sales, for the most part, are factors such as state legislation requiring homeowners to meet safety standards; liability issues involving commercial properties; increased consumer awareness from the media and Internet; and residential concerns about neighborhood kids getting into unsupervised backyards due to homes being built closer together.
“Safety product sales are up tremendously,” confirms Phil Del Negro, general manager of retailer Specialty Pool Products Inc. in Broad Brook, Conn. “In the last five years, they’ve gone up 200 percent.
“I think we’ve seen a dramatic rise in a lot of safety products for many reasons,” Del Negro adds. “As technology has improved, the price of products has decreased and consumer awareness has increased.”
Other pool professionals echo his enthusiasm. “In the safety category, we don’t have any products that don’t sell well,” says Mark McQuivey, director of merchandising at the Phoenix-based Leslie’s, which specializes in pool supplies in more than 400 retail outlets across the country. “At this point, we don’t have any safety products that we’re talking about replacing due to poor sales.”
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission also has played a significant role in the soaring sales of products such as covers, portable fencing, alarms, safety latches, ladders, anti-entrapment devices and accessories. It consistently hammers home the message that homeowners need more than just adult supervision to protect children from drowning, according to Del Negro. “Government consumer reports have started rating safety products in the pool industry like never before,” he says. “As a result, they’ve given legitimacy to our industry and safety within it.”
Covering the bases
One of the more commonly recommended safety precautions is a pool cover. And more and more, consumers are opting for automatic versions.
Although most models tend to range from $6,000 to $8,000 (manual safety covers cost approximately $1,500 to $4,000), many in the industry refer to them as an “easy sale,” especially in extreme climate areas.
“It’s gotten to the point where about 90 percent of our pools have automatic safety covers installed in them,” says Pat Henry, owner of builder/retailer Prestige Pools in St. Paul, Minn. “Sales have gone up threefold in the last five years.”
Sticker shock eventually fades when retailers and dealers point out that automatic covers represent more than just a safety investment that protects children. “When you tell the customer that they’re going to save as much as $200 per month on their heating bill, all of a sudden, the price doesn’t sound so bad,” Ludlow says.
Word-of-mouth referrals also spur sales. “People start using the covers, like them, and tell their neighbors, friends and relatives,” says Del Negro.
Manual and automatic safety covers also give families enough peace of mind that they don’t have to wait until their kids are grown to have a pool. “They can buy a pool and put a safety cover on it, and feel comfortable knowing that they can close off the pool safely if they’re at work or the babysitter is coming over,” Henry says.
Spa safety covers have seen a similar increase in sales. “In the last five years, we’ve been selling them pretty regularly,” says Randy Beard, co-owner of builder Pure Water Pools in Costa Mesa, Calif., and gold winner for safety at the Western Pool & Spa Show in Long Beach, Calif., for the last two years. “I just saw an aluminum hardcover that we installed seven years ago, and the thing still looks great. They last forever.”
Although spa safety covers range in price between $450 to $850, homeowners take comfort in hearing how the product saves them money in the long run. The cost of the cover is absorbed in the heating costs consumers save, according to Beard.
No barrier to profits
If savings are selling covers, legislation is pushing fencing. State and local barrier ordinances continue to keep perimeter fencing at the top of the safety products sales heap. For example, Florida passed a mandatory law in January stating that all pools in newly constructed homes must have four-sided barriers.
As a result, these regulations and codes translate into big sales for retailers across the country. “Sales are up about 200 percent,” says Del Negro. “It’s a huge category for us.”
Transparent mesh fencing, the most common variety, typically shapes to the freeform nature of pools and decks. It also can be left up as a barrier or taken down when homeowners entertain in the backyard. “We stock a lot of safety fences,” says McQuivey. “They’re selling very well, even though they can run upwards of $3,000.
“When you’re talking about the safety of a child, I don’t think price is an issue,” he adds.
While removable fencing adapts to many lifestyles, it has a drawback. “You’re taking them up and down all the time when people want to use the pool,” says Dirk Owen, sales manager of retailer Coral Pools in Tulsa, Okla. “So they’re a bit inconvenient.”
Safety latches, which automatically close gates and doors around the pool area, also help keep children away from the backyard. Consumers consistently count on them, according to Owen. “Sales are up about 25 percent in the last year,” he confirms.
High-tech gets low marks
Not so for the next segment of safety products: surveillance equipment. Video surveillance for backyard-pool safety hasn’t developed as much as originally anticipated, and several reasons are cited for the lackluster sales.
Some systems cost several thousand dollars, and users find it inconvenient to stand by the central monitor to supervise activity. “There’s been a fallback on the high-tech equipment,” Del Negro says. “They really haven’t been adopted by many consumers. I think the cost is prohibitive.”
Others feel interest in video surveillance still may accelerate. “Parents have had them in their kids’ rooms for years to keep an eye on them,” says Tom Moneta, president of builder Leisure Living Pools in Frisco, Texas. “If they’re familiar with the system, they can stick one in the backyard and pan around the pool 24/7.
“If you’re in the house and the kids are in the backyard, you can still be outside with them,” he adds.
That’s what one pool builder has already found. “We have been very successful with remote cameras and have had clients mount them all around the pool,” says Ron Gibbons, president of Ron Gibbons Swimming Pools, a construction company in Islip Terrace, N.Y. “It’s then wired to their TV. Now, their backyard can be called up on their screen with a touch of a button [on the TV’s remote control.]”
Four-alarm sales
Going from one end of the price spectrum to the other, safety alarm systems consistently rival the sales success of pool and spa covers. With devices ranging from $99 to $400, retailers and dealers report growing sales numbers.
“We carry every kind of pool alarm, from laser-beam perimeter alarms [that pick up movement before a child enters the water] to water-detection devices, which track turbulence in the water,” says Rich Frindt, vice president of operations at Litehouse Pools, a distributor/retailer with 26 stores throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. “They’re hot sellers because they’re reasonably priced.”
Some store owners can’t stock alarms on their shelves fast enough. “We had to reorder because we sold a lot more than we expected to this year,” Owen says. “The voice-activated alarms are doing better because children don’t actually have to fall into the pool before it notifies the parents.”
Del Negro says the floating and on-deck alarms, which detect motion in the water, rank as his No. 1 sellers. In the last two years, he’s experienced a whopping sales increase of 300 to 400 percent. “Every year, when shows like ‘20/20’ run their specials on drowning, I probably double my sales of pool alarms the next day,” he says.
Although sales remain extremely strong, other retailers prefer not to dive into the safety alarm market. They say they have some issues with alarm systems.
“The experience we’ve had with them is that by the time the alarm goes off and somebody gets over there, the accident has already happened,” Ludlow says. “If someone’s in the house and the alarm goes off, there could be a drowning by the time they get to the pool.”
Sales of gate and door alarms also have stayed steady in the last five years, but those products have their drawbacks as well. With all the false alarms set off by people going in and out of the backyard, many consumers end up disconnecting them, according to Owen.
“Homeowners get tired of hearing the buzzer if it’s on a door or gate that’s used all the time,” he says. “They have to take the batteries out to keep it from going off, and then they might not put them back in when they really need it.”
Safety wristband alarms, which sound off if a child falls into a pool, still are quick sellers. However, some retailers aren’t promoting them as much as they used to.
“The problem with this product is that the child has to fall into the pool for the alarm to go off, and they also have to keep the wristband on,” points out Owen. “Small children tend to try to take them off.”
Alarms using sonar, which were introduced into the market this year, show signs of taking the industry by storm. Although prices range between $5,000 to $7,000, the alarms differentiate between severe weather conditions such as wind and rain, and a child or adult falling into the pool, according to Beard.
“I could sell sonar at almost every job,” he says. “It detects body mass, so if a basketball or duck goes into the pool, nothing happens.
“Every pool we build, we try to retrofit for sonar,” Beard adds. “It’s such an up-and-coming product.”
Layers of protection
Many retailers subscribe to the “layers of protection” theory, which is another reason behind skyrocketing sales of safety products. The more barriers that can be placed between children and the pool, the safer families feel.
“What we’re doing is giving consumers the option of layers — sonar, barrier fencing and door alarms,” says Beard, who recently sold $20,000 of safety equipment to one family. “We’re creating layers to help them supervise their children when there are lapses and times when they don’t have their kids in sight.
“When we install layers, we’re giving the clock time,” he adds. “So we like to recommend several safety products.”
McQuivey calls it a “three layers of protection” approach to safety. “We tell consumers they should have a fence around their pool and keep it locked,” he says. “Everything should also be alarmed, from their door to get into the backyard to the fence that’s around their pool — even the backdoor, so they know if it’s been opened by a child.
“The best safety device is supervision,” he adds. “But that’s the one thing that we unfortunately can’t sell.”
