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Pristine Pools and Spas

Chasing a fresh approach to business, Pristine Pools and Spas jumpstarts its company culture

IN MAY OF 2010, Pristine Pools and Spas moved into a 20,000-square-foot showroom, 18,000 square feet larger than where it had been. Store manager Chris Allen says Pristine enjoyed the growth the new location brought, but now is turning its focus to customer service and employee satisfaction.

“After the first couple years of growth at the new retail location, [Brown] wanted to restrategize his approach to the retail floor,” Allen says.

Brown’s and Allen’s approach included honing in on which products to sell and trying to reset the company’s internal culture.

Pristine’s 20,000 square feet encompasses multiple backyard elements — including pools, spas, patio furniture and fire pits — and multiple brands within those categories. “The problem with carrying too many brands is it begins to be confusing for customers and difficult for the salesman to effectively learn their products,” Allen says. “So we carefully selected which brands met our customers needs.” They started to weed out products that didn’t do well or cluttered the selling process, and went from carrying five spa brands to two.

“We want customers to come back and enjoy the experience with Pristine, not just their hot tub,” Allen says. “When they come in to buy the hot tub, it’s not a transactional experience for them — it’s a relationship experience. Their experience with us is why they’ll come back and buy again, or refer their friends and neighbors.”

A big part of that experience — and an area much harder to refresh than products — is the company culture. The overall feel of the store is reflected by the attitudes and passion of the employees, Allen says, so he and Brown began the difficult task of making sure they had the right people in place. (This included having to let a few go.)

“We wanted the people who had the long-term goals in mind and wanted to be part of that long-term team,” Allen says. Attitude and teachability, not experience, were paramount. “There are a lot of new products on the market that are efficient and effective, and have changed the industry,” Allen says. “We need people with open minds to look at the products we’re going to carry and be excited about them. If we don’t have those types of people, it’s hard to gain traction.”

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Having the right employees wasn’t the end of the culture journey: Now they had to keep them happy.

These days, regular open-forum discussions let employees know their opinions and talents are appreciated. The meetings, along with encouraging and participating in community and charity programs, have helped to shift Pristine towards a collaborative culture.

“Once our employees began to feel that they are part of a team here, we’ve seen dramatic changes,” Allen says. “Whether it’s policy changes or anything that comes up, we reason together, we come up with a solution and we come out as a team.”

To help gauge how it’s doing, Pristine now participates in Best Places to Work in Idaho, a program developed by local human resources firm POPULUS and Idaho Business Review magazine. Pristine’s employees are surveyed anonymously on their job satisfaction. “It’s nice to get their true feedback and see our employee satisfaction increase,” Allen says.

Partnering with a premier company like Pristine Pools and Spas makes it very easy to show people why we stand apart in the industry. From the aesthetics of the showroom and the professionalism of the staff to the customer experience, pristine is a superstar.

Russell Moody, regional sales manager, D1 Spas