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When a contractor abandoned Jeff Thiessen’s half-finished backyard pool in Scottsdale, Arizona, he called Shasta Pools. Phoenix-based Shasta, which has been around for more than 60 years, finished the job. Last month, Thiessen’s family office bought it.
You might think the golden age of swimming pools has passed. Americans’ pandemic-era enthusiasm for spending more time and money in their backyards has faded. New in-ground pool construction fell below 60,000 units last year, roughly half its pandemic peak and the lowest level seen since the early 1980s, according to Pool Corporation, the world’s largest distributor of swimming pool supplies and equipment.
The average cost of building a swimming pool, across the 377 jobs completed by Shasta in 2025, is $73,500.
“It’s more of an i-shape [market] now,” said Skip Ast III, director of sales at Shasta and part of the third generation of the founding Ast family. “It’s just the haves and have-nots.”
Despite this, more than two dozen sponsor-backed swimming pool platforms have formed or been acquired over the past four years. The largest, Austin-based SPS PoolCare, has completed more than 190 acquisitions since 2021, according to PitchBook data.
But PE’s interest in swimming pools is less about digging expensive holes and more about servicing them once they are built.
Pools need chemicals, cleaning, pumps, heaters, repairs and renovation. There are about 5.5 million pools in the US, propping up a $62 billion servicing market, according to the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance. Maintenance and minor repairs made up 64% of pool-product sales last year, new construction only 14%.
The company’s buyers, Dansons Capital Group—created after Thiessen sold grilling equipment supplier Pit Boss Grills in 2023—Accrual Equity Partners, and commercial pool builder Hydro Construction plan to help Shasta expand its maintenance and repair business, with the eventual aim of turning it into a broader home-services business.
The builder of a pool “can win that customer over for life from the initial transaction,” said Jacob Tilzer, founder and managing partner of Accrual. |
