The Pool Community

There are two very different ways to grow a pool service business: acquire an existing route with recurring customers or build your customer base one account at a time.

Buying a route can provide immediate recurring revenue and route density, but it requires upfront capital and comes with risks like customer retention, account quality, pricing, and whether the seller's relationships will successfully transfer.

Building from scratch costs less upfront and gives you control over which customers you take on, but reaching meaningful route density can take time.

Pool business owners: If you were starting again today, would you buy a route or build from zero?

Route buyers: What would need to be true for an acquisition to make more sense than organic growth?

If you've done both, which produced the better return on your time and money?

Pool routes are often valued using monthly recurring service revenue, but two routes producing the same revenue can be very different businesses.

Customer concentration, pricing, route density, account retention, service area, profitability, equipment-repair revenue, employee involvement, and how long the accounts have been established can all affect what a buyer should be willing to pay.

Route owners: What factors do you think have the biggest impact on a route's value?

Buyers and investors: What do you look at before making an offer, and what are the biggest red flags during due diligence?

If you've bought or sold a pool route before, share what you learned from the process.