When Jeremy Lucovich bought Southwest Spas at the end of 2019, he had never owned a business. More notably, he had never been in a hot tub.

A sales professional, Lucovich had recently lost his job as a regional sales manager for a wire manufacturer when an acquaintance — the owner of Southwest Spas — suggested he buy the Mesa, Arizona, business. Lucovich had an entrepreneurial streak and wanted to stop traveling for work. Within a few months, he went for it.

“I didn’t know what I didn’t know,” Lucovich says.

Southwest Spas had been in the same Mesa location since 1982, giving Lucovich an established customer base but also a business built around decades-old ways of operating. He found himself learning spa sales and repairs while modernizing systems and processes — all as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.

The timing ultimately worked in his favor. After a slow first few months, demand surged. The store sold about 30 hot tubs through the first half of 2020 before finishing the year with roughly 141 sales.

Then came another major change. Southwest Spas moved away from longtime supplier Dimension One and became a Hydropool dealer. Lucovich says the relationship felt like a good fit from the start, particularly after visiting the manufacturer in Canada and meeting its employees. Southwest Spas was named Hydropool’s New Dealer of the Year its first year with the brand and Dealer of the Year the next.

Through all the changes, sales have remained Lucovich’s comfort zone. His philosophy isn’t complicated: build rapport, follow up and do what you said you would do.

“If [you say] you’re going to call them at 2 p.m., just call them at 2,” he says.

But the company is increasingly focused on what happens after the salesperson closes the deal.

“It really comes down to the practice of being proactive,” says Jasmin Wischerman, who works across the business to keep operations organized. “We don’t just want to make the sale and move on. Our goal is to emphasize our postsale service.”

That means following up after deliveries, catching problems before customers call and making sure customers know whom to contact when they need help. Behind the scenes, it also requires careful communication about inventory, scheduling and promises made during the sales process.

“For us, it really comes back to the fact that we’re not just making a sale — we’re creating an experience,” Wischerman says. “We want everything after the sale to feel just as good as the experience they had in the store.”

That approach has become more important as Southwest Spas enters its next phase.

In 2026, Lucovich opened a second location about 25 miles away in fast-growing Queen Creek. Rather than carry the Southwest Spas name, he gave the showroom its own identity: Queen Creek Hot Tubs. The name helps distinguish it in a market crowded with similarly named businesses while tying it to the community it serves.

The new location also gave Lucovich something he didn’t have when he entered the industry: the opportunity to build a store from scratch.

“I inherited [Southwest], … but let me put my spin on this thing,” he says of the new Queen Creek location. “Let me make this mine.”

Queen Creek also offered a different retail environment. The showroom sits in a new development with a supermarket and other businesses that generate regular traffic, and directly across the street from a pool builder. With the cost of a new pool climbing, Lucovich sees an opportunity to reach homeowners who may decide a hot tub or swim spa makes more sense for their backyard.

The original Mesa location still provides enough space to stock inventory for both stores. Queen Creek, meanwhile, functions primarily as a showroom with a smaller selection of chemicals and filters rather than the inventory stored in Mesa.

That increased walk-in traffic has created a new challenge for the sales team.

“There’s been a lot of excitement and new faces coming through the door, so the team has had to get into the rhythm of helping those walk-ins while also knowing when to hop back in, return calls, follow up and make sure no opportunity slips through the cracks,” Wischerman says.

For now, Lucovich’s focus is getting the new location established while strengthening service. Until recently, service existed primarily to support Southwest Spas customers rather than as a growth-focused part of the company. Now, he sees an opportunity to make more of the customer base the store has built over decades.

That could mean becoming more proactive rather than waiting for customers to call — identifying warranties nearing expiration, for example, and offering inspections that can discover problems while they’re still covered. Lucovich also sees an expanded service operation as another source of steady business when new-spa sales soften.

Longer term, Lucovich sees potential for additional locations. For now, the second store and a greater emphasis on service offer plenty of room to grow.

For Wischerman, that growth comes back to the same principle that guides the company’s sales and postsale approach.

“People trust Jeremy because he backs up what he says with action,” she says.

Southwest Spas

Jeremy Lucovich

Mesa and Queen Creek, Arizona