Pool and Spa Business Buyer Checklist
Pool and spa service businesses are one of the more interesting acquisitions in the Australian trades market — not because they're glamorous, but because the underlying economics are genuinely attractive when the business is structured well. A pool route is essentially a subscription: the same customers, same pools, same day of the week, paying roughly the same amount each month. Done right, it's about as close to recurring revenue as a blue-collar business gets.
That said, pool businesses have some quirks that catch buyers off guard. The customer relationship is with the technician, not the business. Chemical knowledge and safe handling is regulated. Equipment valuation is tricky — a van and a set of test kits isn't worth much; a van plus 80 loyal residential accounts is worth a great deal more. And a lot of pool businesses in Australia are one-person operations where the owner is the entire business (more on what that means for your acquisition — see the owner dependency guide).
I looked at a pool services acquisition in Melbourne's eastern suburbs a couple of years ago. On paper it was clean: 110 residential accounts, 3 commercial pools, solid margins, owner wanting to retire. The issue we found in due diligence was that the owner had built 90% of those accounts through a personal referral network — his footy club, his neighbours, his church. When we modelled what would actually transfer to a new owner who none of these people knew, the number looked a lot less comfortable. We passed. The buyer who didn't is now finding out.
The checklist below is what I wish that buyer had worked through before he signed.
What makes a pool business worth buying
The short version: recurring revenue that is attached to the business, not the owner. In a good pool acquisition, customers are on written service agreements, the technician is employed by the business (not just the owner doing the work personally), and the customer base has low concentration — no single account makes up more than 5% of revenue.
The full assessment of what a pool business is actually worth is in the separate guide on how to value a pool and spa business, which covers EBITDA normalisation and the multiples typical for this category.
Two tips before you run the checklist
Get the route book. Any serious pool business maintains a service route schedule — which pools are serviced on which day, by which technician, at what price. Request this early. It tells you immediately whether the business is organised or chaotic, and it's the foundation for your customer verification in due diligence.
Talk to three customers before settlement. Pool service customers are generally happy to talk. A quick call asking whether they're satisfied, whether they've had consistent service, and what they'd do if the service changed hands tells you more than six months of financials.
This is covered in depth in Module 2 of the Playbook, which covers how to assess whether a business type fits your investment criteria before you spend money on due diligence.
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