Hot Tub Hedonism Still Exists for California Dreamers

“How many stores, max, were there on this street?” Stu Robertson calls out to his partner behind the counter at their Beach Boulevard hot tub outlet.

“Thirteen, at one time,” comes the reply.

Robertson now starts counting them up. He stops at three. Maybe four, he says.

Uh-oh, I feel that old wistfulness coming on again. The “California, we hardly knew ye” syndrome.

Robertson, who now owns Valley Spa in Westminster, says he got into the business in 1976. Where was that on the hot tub timeline, I ask. “In 1976, that’s when everything was definitely rockin’ ‘n’ rollin,’ ” Robertson says. “There were spa stores everywhere.”

“From Stanton all the way down to Edinger,” his buddy behind the counter says.

In 1976, Robertson was a former Marine who had quit a job as a safety superintendent on the waterfront. A friend told him about the burgeoning hot tub business.

“I was about to lose my house, things were really bad,” Robertson says. “I had no idea how to sell anything. I knew nothing about nothing. But I had taken a Dale Carnegie sales course, and so I was the only guy (at the spa store) who had a structured presentation. I walked in there, I was there about three days and I sold my first spa. Within about two weeks, I was their top sales guy.”

In those halcyon days when everyone wanted a spa to prove they belonged in California, Robertson would sell three or four a day and sometimes be home and get a call to come in and make a sale.

“I had no idea how a spa worked,” he says, laughing at the recollection, “but I knew the facts. Basically, I had pretty good eyes then and I used to be able to read all the numbers off the pumps and I’d say, ‘We have a horse-and-a-half pump, which is the gold one over there.’ ”

None of which meant anything to him, but because times were great and everyone was having a good time in California then, that’s all it took to sell a hot tub. “Anybody who could read the numbers off the pumps could have sold them,” he says.

The appeal was simple. “I think it was what most Californians thought they should be doing,” he says. “It’s what they thought California was about--hot tubs and the beach and the whole atmosphere. I was real good at selling fantasies.”

I told him that, as a non-Californian back then, that’s exactly how I pictured the hot tub industry: a fantasy business.

“I had the fantasy myself, before I got in the business,” he says. “I had it all drawn out where I wanted one.” Actually, he wanted two, with the second being in his living room “because I had this fantasy of a big party going on and everybody jumping in and out.”

By the early 1980s, the spa industry was flagging. It has flagged so much that when I called a salesman at random this week at another store, he said, “Anyone who’s smart got out of the business.”

But Robertson does the unexpected: he doesn’t burst my bubble.

He’s not making a fortune, he says, but business is good and people are still buying for the same hedonistic reasons that helped fuel my California fantasies.

“The guy who walked in the door in 1974 looked just like the guy who walked in today. Same guy, maybe the guy’s hair is shorter today. The reason he buys the spa is to have a good time. The dominant motive is they want to have a good time in their back yard.”

Robertson explains that the industry suffered because factory-operated stores undercut the traditional mom-and-pop stores, but then lost customers and eventually shut down when they couldn’t maintain the exorbitant profit levels of the 1970s.

They quit selling the fantasy. Instead, Robertson says, “Rather than telling people how great a spa was, they sat you down with a yellow pad and a piece of paper and they lost something doing that. There was a human being out there. There’s got to be humanity in the selling process.”

Robertson says he’s survived all these years for a simple reason: He’s still having fun and he still sells the fantasy.

“I have a hard time believing I’m 45 now. I still feel like I’m in my 20s, doing the same thing. I’ve had fun in it ever since I started. We’re still selling that California dream. It’s a fun product to sell. I like using it myself. The people who buy spas are fun people. They’re not your square kind of guy.”

I feel better already. Heck, I didn’t know the fantasy business still existed.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.