The Haven Spa/ Spa Specialist Story
as told by Jim Arjuna, The Spa Specialist
 This is a story that I have told several thousand times. So, I thought I would just write it down and have people read it.
 
Before I started out with our little company, I had worked for a couple of spa companies in Colorado. And I made a lot of money for them.  So, naturally, I thought why use my talents to make someone else rich, why not give a better life to my wife and family.  I had owned two other businesses before, one was an electrical contracting business in Boulder, most recent. The other was a lawn care business when I was 8 to 10 and again in my teens.  ( I also delivered news papers.)  My mom told me if I wanted to buy things I had to earn my own money.  When I lived in Kansas City at 13 years old, I got this two stroke cheap lawn mower and learned how to fix it, almost weekly. I think I had that motor apart and patched it together more than anyone had ever done before.  I pushed that thing probably over 500 miles to go mow lawns.    I call it determination and lack of funds.  I learned that hard work is good and enjoyable.  It has its own reward.
 
Anyway.  I opened the Spa Specialist, working from my garage, and it was small.  Dave Lapiana and I did service and we were not afraid to drive to South Denver Metro to fix anything. We got some hard jobs, because, these people sought us out.  Nobody else was qualified to do the work and so they kept looking until they found The Spa Specialist.
 
Then I decided that we should open a store.   That is when things got complicated.  We were already getting older quality shell spas and rebuilding them and selling them, those spas are still better than the stuff coming from Southern CA today.  I was sharply aware of the old tubs and how they were made to last, and that spoiled me for the crap being built at that time brand new from most manufacturers.
 
I got brochures, sales pitches, and information on about 100 brands of tubs, including all the major brands that were not in Broomfield.  I am telling you if you think looking for a new spa is a hard job for a smart shopper, this was far worse.  All I saw was the wrong motors running on the wrong impellers, and full foam leakers, with bad plumbing design, and noisy crap that I could not stand to listen to when it ran.  They sounded like "thrashing machines" with the pumps cavitating and the diverter valves making all sorts of annoying sounds.
 
Then I found one spa company who designed clean plumbed spas with correct size motors on the impellers, and excellent digital controls compared to all the other stuff.  It still had some concessions, but we fixed those issues before they went to our customers.  Several of the suctions had to be replumbed on one or two models and later we started putting the themowells in the wall of the tub to stop the short cycling of the pumps.
 
We were in business and we had something that nobody in Denver had, a good product that had excellent therapy and excellent shells.  So, we started out with a tremendous growth and thought we had it made.  We were planning a store in the Parker or South Littleton area.
 
Then I put up a website and smart people were finding it all over the country.  The first customer was from VT who bought from me. He called me and asked me about the spas in his area, the normal junk from So. CA.  I told him, his best bet from among that short list was Sundance, but I would never own one.  About a month later he called and said;  "Have you ever thought about shipping a spa out of state?"  He has owned that spa for nearly 10 years, and I am scheduled to stop by and do some ugrades to it.
 
One of the problems with having a good product, is that 1/ it is reparible for reasonable cost.  2/ The basic foundation lasts and lasts.  This is not a good business plan to have spas last too long.
 
Anyway, the fellow who designed those tubs, Hercules Spas, passed away and left the company to someone who knows nothing about spa design.  So, after two years we started getting spas that were no darn good, because they were trying to copy the crap from So, CA, and we were their number one dealer.  I rebuilt a few of those things, but that was a real losing proposition in time and labor and materials.  But the customer got a really excellent spa.
 
So, I came close to closing the store at that time.  It was depressing for me, because we had worked so hard to get an excellent reputation for our products.   I took another survey of the market and saw even worse crap from So. CA. and the guy in the midwest was making crappy shells.  The Jacuzzi rep came by and I came close to trying that brand.  I am sure glad I did not.  I remember the Caldera rep came by and he was all enthusiastic when he came in.  Had on his fancy Caldera Logo Jacket on.  I used to work in a Caldera store, so I asked him if "So and So" was still working in management after Caldera was bought out.  I used to work in the warranty service in a Caldera store.  After I told him what happened with me and Caldera, he left with his head hung down as he went out the door.
 
The only other companies who have ever impressed me were the pre 1990 Sundance and the Pre 1992 Pacific Marquis.  I kept looking for some way to get what I needed to be able to be satisfied with the product that represented my company.
 
Nobody was using any good construction or insulation methods that I found.  
 
Then this fellow came into our store about 6 months earlier with this funky brochure that looked like someone barely knew how to print, but he brought in a bunch of photos of the back of the spas upside down, showing the construction.   I filed them in my file cabinet and didn't look at them in detail until I was going through all my files looking a spas.  This was Phoenix.  I called him and asked him about the shells.  I looked over the photos with a magnifier to see the details.  It looked really good, except for the plumbing.  So, I called and asked if I could send over diagrams and have the spas built my way.  He said yes.
 
So, I went to northern CA and to the factory and I was impressed with the whole place.   The owner, President, took us around and showed us everything and I asked a lot of questions.  One of the questions was why are you using a proper hand rolled fiberglass shell.  He told me that he was from anther industry and wanted to build spas, many years ago.  He had another spa company called Pacific Coast Clearwater or something like that. I don't exactly remember.  He had been making shells from Centrex, and ABS Acrylic, because these sales people told him it was a good material.  They had so many bad shells that it put them out of business and it cost him all that he had.  So, between the time that he was gathering resources to recover he learned how to make spas correctly.  
 
I asked him why he used 2x4 frames.  He told me that they had trouble with the 2x2 frames, especially in shipping.  I asked him why he was using 56 frame motors.  He told me he was tired of motors burning out.  Basically, he had learned the hard way how to make spas correctly.  I learned from seeing them in the back yards of people with broken down poorly made spas.
 
So, it was out of his terrible experience with his first company that he got back up out of the "ashes" of the first company and started Phoenix spas.  They are still better spas than all the junk from So, CA, by the way.  The problem for most dealers is that Phoenix expects the dealer to do more of the warranty work as part of what they do.  So, a lot of lazy dealers will not work with them.  They put more in the product and less in customer service, but because of where they are they can do more for less.  You just have to fix their mistakes if you want to benefit from them.
 
So, when we sent in our first order for Haven Spas to be build, we sent in three diagrams for plumbing, jetting, controls and insulation.  The spas came out really well and had extreme performance, as they do now.  The first spas did not last one week on our showroom and we ordered a bunch more. Then started shipping them all over the country.  It has evolved since then to the Haven Spas that we do now, with a lot more of our hands on preparation to test them and make them near perfect before they leave. We have not lost a wet test against any brand.  We have lost a sale or two to customers who could not afford to buy ours. "We like your spas better than the other guys, but it is less money."  Typically, after the other store goes out of business, for selling too cheap, we wind up having to take care of them with service and parts.
 
If you want to know the secret to high end products, it is to build them correctly, use the best parts you can find, design with proper engineering, and test them fully, because it is the correct thing to do.  Then you have almost no warranty work and the hard work then is rewarding.