When Alice Cunningham walked away from a prestigious federal career in the mid-1970s to start a hot tub business, her father cried. She had a month of vacation, excellent benefits and a senior role administering job training programs for tens of thousands of people nationwide. She was, by every conventional measure, doing exactly what she was supposed to do.
Olympic Hot Tub’s Founder’s Event honors founders Alice Cunningham and Blair Osborn and their legacy of giving. This year, for its ninth annual event, Olympic Hot Tub is raising funds for Food Lifeline, a nonprofit organization with a mission to feed people experiencing hunger today while working to end hunger for tomorrow.
In 1977, Alice Cunningham and her late husband, Blair Osborn, took a leap of faith. Leaving behind successful careers — Cunningham as a U.S. Department of Labor administrator and Osborn as a mechanical engineering professor — they founded Olympic Hot Tub in Seattle. With no business experience and little precedent to follow, they launched one of the first dedicated hot tub companies in the Pacific Northwest and helped create a new category in the American home experience.
The Hot Tub Hall of Fame was established in 2024 through a partnership between SpaRetailer magazine and the International Hot Tub Association. Created to celebrate the pioneers and visionaries of the industry, the Hall of Fame shines a spotlight on the people whose passion and dedication have shaped the way the world experiences hot water. Honorees come from every corner of the hot tub world.
Remembering O.T. ‘Tom’ Neal
Ah, retirement. It’s a bittersweet word for longtime business owners to think about. But how do owners leave a business they’ve dedicated decades to? Internal succession, selling to an employee, is one popular route.
Olympic Hot Tub kicks off its 7th Annual Founder’s Event in October, which honors founders Alice Cunningham and Blair Osborn and their legacy of giving.
Robert Blair Osborn II died on October 29, 2022, at the age of 84. Robert, who typically went by his…
Hot tub retailer Olympic Hot Tubs kicked off its sixth annual Founders Event throughout the month of October. The event…
About this time 10 years ago, the first issue of SpaRetailer came out; I joined the team a few months…