by Michael, August 12, 2008
POOLCENTER.com began as a local pool service company in 1988 as Cox Pool & Spa Services serving the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area (including Northern Virginia and Maryland).
POOLCENTER.com went on-line in January 1996, essentially establishing one of the very first websites for pool owners and users providing clear and accurate information on pool topics, competent technical support, exceptional customer support/service, and quality swimming pool products at a fair and competitive price to customers worldwide. POOLCENTER.com's award winning pool technical support is provided by Blue Thumb, LLC.
POOLCENTER.com began as "Pool Info" pages filling the need of some pool service customers from Cox Pool & Spa Services that were requesting specific information regarding the care and maintenance of their swimming pools. POOLCENTER.com became the first online portal for swimming pool information, social interaction for people with similar interests (swimming pools), as well as a place to find all those needed pool supplies that a swimming pool is going to need at some point. Building on the success of the information portal for local pool service customers, Cox Pool & Spa Services decided to begin selling pool supplies to customers across the country. This action was based solely on demand through inquiries received from the Pool Info pages that were becoming increasingly popular among residential pool owners across the country. People were reading POOLCENTER.com's online Pool Info pages and learning a lot about how to care for and maintain their own pool; hence saving them a lot of money by not having to have a pool service technician come out every time their chlorinator Chemical Feeder got clogged or stains showed up on the plaster of their in-ground pool. One product page led to another, and after years of juggling both the pool service end with Cox Pool & Spa Services, and the online informational portal/e-commerce end with POOLCENTER.com, the service arm of the company was sold.
POOLCENTER.com began to thrive online and grow as a "dot com" due to the steady increase of electronic "e-sales." Another arena for pool owners to participate in the pool discussion was launched in the late 1990's bringing Pool Talk online for pool owners worldwide to share their experience and information. It provided an open online discussion/forum focusing on providing past, present, and future pool owners a place to join in the topics of discussion in order to give them a chance to learn and be heard; to talk about their pools. Pool owners post pictures of their pool and swap stories ranging from a really cool pool party to how they fixed their Hayward Superpump. The success of launching Pool Talk, which now boasts over 5,000 user-generated posts, led to the most recent incorporation of it and "Pool Info" into a combined Pool Community or The Community Pool.
With the recent popularity of Blogs and Wikis, POOLCENTER.com launched a Pool Community which includes the original Pool Info pages, a link to the Pool Talk discussion/form, a new Pool Tube for users to view/post/edit content on streaming video (instructional, technical, safety, and just for fun videos), Pool Wiki (all "Pool Info" pages...but now they are up for editing and/or adding content, or posting a new article altogether), and Pool Groups where pool owners can get together and discuss topics that are specific to their area of interest.
POOLCENTER.com is now a fast growing online pool store taking pride in its more than 100 years of combined pool technical experience, hundreds of pool related online articles on all pool related topics, an online Community Pool "Pool Community" (first of its kind), and still able to find all those hard to locate parts that, if not found, could eventually turn your pool water green from lack of filtration/circulation. No worries, there is a solution for that problem...see what Inc. Magazine had to say ABOUT US click here. POOLCENTER.com, Inc. is a Virginia corporation. We are located in Springfield, Virginia; just inside the Washington D.C. Beltway. POOLCENTER.com products ship from various locations around the United States to various locations around the world.
Welcome to the site for swimming pool information & products!
