Head to Head With Joe Vassallo of Paragon Pools

Joe Vassallo has been a permanent fixture in the pool industry for the past three decades. As a youngster in Brooklyn, NY – he had dreams of becoming an architect and went to the prestigious Brooklyn Tech High School. Receiving some initial design training, he quickly realized he didn’t have the funds necessary to pursue a degree in architecture.

Putting those dreams aside he began a career running a wholesale distribution company for Tropicana orange juice. After selling his business and relocating to Las Vegas, Vassallo quickly realized that there was a different standard of living than the one he was accustomed to in New York.

Starting a Life in Las Vegas

“One of the attractions about Las Vegas, wasn’t the gambling or the nightlife, coming from a high-end real estate place like New York to Las Vegas, the money went pretty far. I was barely 40 years old and was able to sell my house and buy another house twice the size for half the cost and had a nicer living environment than living in the city,” said Vassallo.

“When I bought my house, like everyone else in Vegas, I wanted a swimming pool. I had a guy come out to design my pool and my design juices started to kick in,” said Vassallo, “I pretty much knocked him off his drafting table and started designing my pool.”

First Forays Into The Pool Industry

“The guy said, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good at this, you ought to talk to my boss.’,” said Vassallo, “turns out his boss was the owner of Tango Pools, Tony Tegano who has since passed away, was a little Italian guy like me from New York. I went to go meet him and we got along great and he hired me and that’s when I first got into the swimming pool industry.”

“Life seems to have a path that takes you where you are supposed to go.”

Joe Vassallo – Paragon Pools

For Vassallo, this first foray into design meant getting back to his initial aspirations of being an architect when he was a student in Brooklyn. While this wasn’t architecture, he was feeding a creative impulse and found enjoyment in what he was doing. “It was great because it brought me back to what I wanted to do which was design, while not designing a building, it was fun designing pools. It was fun to meet people and talk about things that they were really excited about. People are happy to see you in this business, it’s not like you’re going to the dentist or something.”

Vassallo’s career inevitably saw him progress to become the General Manager of Paddock Pools, where he truly began to establish a name for himself in the Las Vegas market as a leading designer. Eventually, Vassallo would feel an impulse to leave that organization to start his own vision, Paragon Pools. “Truth be known, it was an owner absentee business. We were in Vegas and they were really located in Arizona. I thought it was time to get on my own. I was doing everything on my own anyway. I got a little nudge from my publicist at the time, Mary Vail who said you really need to open up your own company. With her encouragement, that’s what I wound up doing and we opened up Paragon Pools in 2001.”

Becoming a Top Pool Builder in the Las Vegas Market

The path to becoming a top builder in the Las Vegas market wasn’t always a linear one for Vassallo who can recall setbacks that came with the Great Recession in 2008. “Las Vegas went through a very rough period,” said Vassallo, “where we were having more foreclosures than anyplace else in the country. In order to survive that (time period), we started doing more of the remodeling and repair work. A lot of people, even if they wanted to leave their homes they couldn’t because they couldn’t get the value out of it and were probably underwater at best.”

A Make or Break Moment

The inability for homeowners to get full market value for their homes during the Great Recession meant that many opted to remodel their existing pool and stay in their homes. A sophomore pool company at the time, Paragon Pools was able to ride out the recession doing remodels. This was a make-or-break time period that saw many seasoned builders leave the industry. What followed would be a contraction in the industry that would last for the next five years. “The remodeling and repair business became kind of a lifeline for us and then finally we moved out of that bad time into some better times. Right now things are just going through the roof. I’ve got way more business than I can handle.”

Unprecedented Demand for Inground Pools

Joe has been in the industry for decades and has seen bull markets and bear markets. The interest in swimming pools has been white-hot the last two years. We asked Vassallo if he has ever experienced anything like this and if he could predict what was coming next to which he responded, “In 30 years, I’ve never seen anything like this. I can only guess, I’m not an economics expert but I think it was a confluence of several things,” said Vassallo, “number one, when Covid hit, manufacturing started to dwindle. Plants were either closing or just running skeleton crews, and transportation stopped.”

“Look at the other side of that,” said Vassallo, “Mom, Dad, and the kids are home. They’ve been talking about getting a boat or something for the last few years and just never pulled the trigger. Now everybody is home and looking at an empty backyard in 100-degree weather and said ‘you know what, we can’t spend money going out to dinner or traveling on vacation, let’s spend it in the backyard.”

A Paradox of Buying Habits Leads to Booming Economy For Pool Builders

The paradox in how a pandemic could lead to a booming economy for the pool industry is one Vassallo feels can be explained, “Luckily everyone was still working. Most people were able to work from home given all the new technology we have. There were still those discretionary dollars available and they were able to pull the trigger.”

The situation has created a spike in demand that builders have not been able to fully capitalize on. “We have this downturn in supply and a huge increase in demand,” said Vassallo. As a thought leader in the pool & spa industry, we asked Vassallo if he thought the industry was doing all it could to capitalize on demand right now to which he responded, “I would say we’re probably far from that, I’m sure everyone else is probably like me. The resources just aren’t there to fully capitalize on demand. Manufacturers are at their limit, they just can’t produce enough. I know for me, I’m getting five times more leads than I can handle.”

Pool Industry Unable to Fully Capitalize on Demand

While labor shortages still prevail around the United States, Vassallo says finding enough available bodies still remains a problem. “I just can’t find the people and resources to be able to capture that five times increase, I can’t even capture it three times,” said Vassallo. The limitations are the materials and labor, it’s not there to support what you can design and sell.”

A White Hot Pool Market is a Good Problem to Have

While supply and demand issues still remain a problem, Joe Vassallo says it is a better problem to have than the one he experienced a decade ago during the Great Recession. “When there was no one looking to buy a pool.”

Setting Expectations With Customers

There is another problem, however, and that is setting expectations with customers. Given the nature of the sheer influx of consumers interested in a pool versus the amount of labor and materials to actually build them, a backlog is forming. Managing those expectations to capitalize on momentum is essential during this time.

A sentiment to which Vassallo agrees, “The first thing I tell potential customers is that I’m probably not going to be able to get back to you for at least six weeks. That’s before I can even give them a design or proposal and in some cases, it’s gone further than that.”

Passing the Torch

As Paragon Pools moves into its third decade of existence, the milestone is a poignant one for Vassallo who has been slowly making the transition to take a step back. Joe Vassallo Jr. who recently was named PHTA Builder of the Year, is taking a more active role at the helm of operations for Paragon Pools. It is a point of pride for Vassallo Sr. (who received the Builder of the Year Award in 2012) and has been grooming his son over the last decade in preparation for handing over operations to him.

“You have to be very very lucky. First, I’ve always had a very good relationship with my son. I coached him through little league,” said Vassallo, “We did a lot of things together all the way through. When he was in high school during the summers I used to take him out with me and just help me go measure a yard. He would hold the end of the tape while I went around and measured it.”

The process of becoming immersed in that world and learning the trade would take years, but Joe Vassallo says that his son began demonstrating leadership qualities that gave him the confidence he could step back.

“Little by little he started to get more and more involved. I don’t want to say that I pushed him that way but I did not discourage him in any way,” said Vassallo, “he started to demonstrate some talent and I helped him nurture that talent and as time went by he became one of my best designers and salespeople. Obviously, the next step was to run a company. He took to all of that and embraced it and enjoys it.”

Vassallo Sr. now spends the majority of his time working on commercial projects and devoting energy to a swim program the company has developed to help local children in their community. The Float Like a Duck program developed by Paragon Pools is something the family is passionate about and is proud to be able to give back to the Las Vegas community.

Establishing a Succession Plan

Putting a succession plan in place for Joe Vassallo Jr. to direct day-to-day operations has been what has allowed Vassallo to focus on his passion projects. Aside from receiving a major acknowledgment of achievement this year, operations have been running as smooth as ever and Vassallo Sr. seems pleased.

Paragon’s reputation as an elite builder continues to grow and as a result, the jobs are getting more complicated, more over the top, and more expensive. “There was a time where we were doing maybe 150-160 pools a year. Now, it’s more like 50 or 60 but they’re much higher-end and more complicated than they were before.”

That type of high-end work is right in the wheelhouse for Joe Vassallo Jr. who is now firmly at the helm guiding Paragon Pools into a second generation that has become synonymous with setting the highest standard in the industry. Clearly, the apple did not fall far from the tree.

Listen to our entire interview with Joe Vassallo Sr. on the Pool Magazine podcast