Like many pool and spa builders, Phoenix’s Presidential Pools changed business models after the Great Recession, from one that used mostly in-house crews to one that relied on local subcontractors for most construction stages.
But with business continuing to pick up at a time when available labor keeps diminishing, the PSN Top Builder is bringing at least one stage back in-house.
Earlier this year, Presidential Pools CEO Tim Murphy seized on an opportunity to hire workers and key staff from a plastering subcontractor that recently closed to start his own division for applying interior finishes.
“It’s really tough to get labor, for the subcontractors, so we’ve had a lot of price increases,” Murphy explained.
Not even two months in, the new division has two crews and is starting up a third. It currently applies pebble finish to about three-quarters of the approximately 1,400 new pools that the company builds annually, but Murphy expects that to be 100% soon.
While the new operation will not contract its services to other builders, Murphy does expect it to open a new revenue stream in the near future. Once the division has been fine-tuned, Murphy plans to begin taking on renovation work. Before, he avoided this segment, as local plaster firms already dominated it.
The new interior finish division joins the masonry and rock work crews that Presidential has in-house.
This is not the only new operation Presidential started this year. Murphy took a similar tack to face another challenge: Acquiring enough quality travertine to surface the decks around most pools his company builds. To gain more control over the situation, he recently began importing his own material directly from Turkey.
