Tony Adams

CEO

Adams Pool Solutions

Pleasanton, Calif.

We’re in the process of expanding to Mexico, and targeting the resorts in Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta and Cancun.

We’re excited about the move, and think we’ll do quite well there.

Terry Jirovsky, the president of Pebble Technology Inc., and I had been talking about going international for years, but we had a problem because of passports.

Ever since 9/11, moving people in and out of the country — especially Mexican nationals — has become difficult.

Then one day, I was approached by one of my workers. “Hey Tony,” he said, “sometimes you’re so smart, you’re dumb. We’re all Mexicans; why don’t we go down to Mexico?”

We’ve got a substantial base of manpower out of the Guadalajara area: our own guys and ex-employees of competitors who were trained in the United States.

Now we’re giving guys I grew up with, and worked with for 30 years, opportunities in Mexico. If they want to move back down, we’ll give them a part of the business. So a lot of our guys are very excited about this.

And we reached a deal with Pebble Technology to handle nearly all of its Mexico business. We’ve probably bid close to 150 more projects in the past month alone.

In fact, recently we received government approval to establish a Mexican corporation. So it’s really huge.

With the help of Spray Force, we’ve managed to transport some state-of-the-art equipment into Mexico. We hope to have equipment in Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun and possibly Mexico City.

Wherever a project arises, we can easily move one or two pumps into the area.

We probably have the only Pebble Tec and plaster pumps in town because down there, they wheelbarrow everything and mix it in buckets. The workmanship in Mexico typically is less than stellar; they tile a lot of pools, and they’re just falling apart.

In fact, we just finished a renovation north of Puerto Vallarta. It was a private residence, but the pool was 200 feet long. They were told it would take six weeks before anything could be done. We were in and out of there in nine days.

We’re not just hunkering down — we’re looking toward other untapped markets, and we think Mexico is a huge one. It could actually be our future.