Dianne Cloyd, Co-Owner
Q: What are some of the specific challenges you face in your region?
We’re in a strange place here in the Central Valley. Over the years, we’ve noticed that we are a little insulated from some of the economic ups and downs that have been experienced in other places because the financial basis of our valley is agriculture. In the last three years, we’ve felt more impact because of the water situation that’s going on in California. That’s impacted our bottom line a little bit because the farmers aren’t producing as much since they don’t have the water to produce. We’ve had a pretty steady history up until they started deciding somewhere along the line that a fish was more important than people eating. So, that’s a political fight here that’s impacted us financially, but we’ve been resilient and resourceful. We’ve decided that if the people aren’t coming to us, we’ll take the spas to them. We’ve worked out deals with some of the home improvement stores around and we’ve done weekend specials in their parking lots rather than have a weekend event at our store. We’ve combined advertising that we do with advertising that they do, trying to put ourselves in front of more people who wouldn’t necessarily come to the store, but they really are in the market. That’s how we’ve tried to adapt to the economic climate that we’re in right now and it seems to be working.
Q: Why do you think you’ve had this kind of longevity in this industry?
It comes back to our service and our concept with everybody who works here – the importance of that customer service. We have always trained our people that your job is customer service and you provide that customer service through the specific talent that you have. That goes from David and I, who own the place, all the way down to the sub-contracted installers. We impress upon them from the very beginning that you are coming to us with a certain set of experience that you have in the field, but let me tell you what you’re going to do when you work for us. That has seemed to keep us around for a long time. People buying a new house are coming back to us, buying almost the same spa that they had before. It was going to be ridiculous to try and move it, so they sold it with the house and bought a new one, coming back to us again. We hear, “Okay, I want that spa; here’s my check. I’ll be ready for it in a month.” I think that’s the thing we see most often is people coming back because they appreciated the attention to their product. We consider that they spent their money with us a valuable thing and I think a lot of spa places, at least in our general vicinity, don’t always portray that same respect for their hard-earned money.