A few days late, but here’s how day two of Pro Summit went.
Friday was hands-on training. Saturday was the business side: strategy, people, and learning from the pros around you.
Morning:
Hal Denbar kicked off the day on stage. He went from a single route to a national operation, and he’s now on our board. His message was that being in the room makes you better at what you do.
The Skimmer Stations were open in the Alamo Foyer too. Five stops covered routes, jobs, and field ops; customer management and marketing; reporting and analytics; billing, payments, and financials; and integrations and the marketplace.
J.B. Sauceda gave the keynote on why culture is an advantage no competitor can copy, and how to make it part of how you run your business.
Then came the pool industry panel with Ryan Marcinik (Happy Pool and Spa), Keith Johnson (Pool Works), Mark Warshaw (Heritage Pool Supply Group), Jack Nelson(Skimmer), and moderated by Niki Acosta(Skimmer). They covered connected data, practical AI, the private equity roll-up era, rising customer expectations, and what’s on the radar for 2027 in the industry.
Right before lunch, Dave Fellman walked through hiring, training, managing, and keeping a strong team.
Afternoon:
Jonathan Johnson and Ed Shahbazyan from Pool Profits talked about how AI search decides which pool companies to recommend to pool owners.
Then the room split in two. The product ideation lab had pros giving our Product and Design team feedback on real concepts, and the owner roundtables had small groups of owners swapping what’s working on marketing, pricing, customer experience, and employee engagement.
After that, Niki Acosta and Amanda DaSilva and Bryan Hjelm, walked through what Skimmer has recently launched, what’s launching this quarter and a peek at some of our 2027 priorities.
Evening: We closed things out with the raffle draw. Thank you to our partners for the prizes, and congratulations to the winners. Then we headed to Oak Tree Terrace by the Riverwalk for the closing party, and the night carried on at Howl at the Moon.
Thank you to Heritage Pool Supply Group for sponsoring Pro Summit, to Stripe for the happy hour, and to every speaker, partner, and pro who made it to San Antonio.
What was your biggest takeaway from the weekend?