If all had gone according to plan, Ron Perkins would have bought Seven Seas Pools & Spas at the end of 2024.
But like most well-laid plans, things didn’t happen that way.
Thanks to the pandemic, hard work and plenty of conversations, Perkins ended up with the business early. He purchased it at the end of 2022 from Dan Carroll, whose wife is first cousins with Perkins’ wife.
Carroll attributes the sped-up sale to Perkins’ tenacious attitude and work ethic. As Carroll recounts, Perkins — a former Lowe’s manager — had only been at Seven Seas Pools & Spas for 30 days before he had fired someone and told Carroll he would need full autonomy to make decisions.
“When Ron took over in that first 30 days, there were a lot of people not happy because Ron’s aggressive,” Carroll says. “But after he sat down and talked with them all, they realized growth was possible. Ron gave them the support they needed. They were able to blossom under him.”
Reflecting on his audaciousness, Perkins laughs about it but sees how it played a huge role in him being the owner of Seven Seas Pools & Spas today.
“It was just fate,” Perkins says. “It was what had to happen, and, for whatever reason he trusted me, and somehow I turned on the salesmanship and made him believe that was the right direction to go.”
Perkins says coming in after Carroll had gone through the 2008 recession and other business road bumps gave him plenty to absorb.
Carroll admits he learned a lot during the 2000s. At that point, he had bought his brother out, and a Watkins training “opened our eyes to what is a whole other business if you do it correctly.”
Up to that point, pool construction had been Carroll’s big focus — he was on pool jobs at age 10 and running crews by 14 — and spas were unfamiliar. But when the 2008 recession hit, he started to better understand that multiple, self-sufficient revenue streams mattered. The pool-building side of the business couldn’t be responsible for funding the spa side, for example.
That’s when he started remodeling stores and preparing a massive 12,000-square-foot showroom — only to have the economy tank two weeks after they opened.
“What’s amazing — a true testament to him and what I really respect about him — is that he didn’t lay a single employee off,” says Perkins of Carroll’s leadership during the recession. “He weathered the storm. He stayed through the whole thing at all costs.”
When he and Perkins connected in 2011, Carroll was 48, and retirement wasn’t on his radar. But those early conversations laid the groundwork for him to pass the business on to Perkins.
Once Perkins hit the ground running, Carroll knew his new hire was onto something.
“[Hiring Ron] exposed that there was a lot of opportunity here and we could become more of a spa company,” Carroll says. “That was where he was able to take it.”
By 2012, Carroll was purchasing land to build what would become a bustling spa store for the company. Carroll believes Perkins’ willingness to take full ownership served not only the family well but also the customers and employees.
Carroll says that from the start, people assumed Perkins was the owner because he had been involved since the beginning. “We didn’t have a lot of [employee] turnover,” Carroll says. “There was consistency in those jobs. [Customers] got a good experience when that job was done.”
The 12-year onramp where Carroll slowly increased Perkins’ authority made for a smoother transition and buyout process, too. For him, it’s been a joy watching Perkins take over the business and grow it.
Now, Carroll jokes, “the official transformation of him becoming me has happened.”