If you're a regular AQUA reader, you're well familiar with our State of the Industry issue. If you're not, here's the short story: Every year, we ask our readers to take our State of the Industry survey. In it, we ask about the health of your business, successes on the sales floor, product trends and your feelings about the industry as a whole.
We break our SOI issue into three parts: one for retailers, one for builders and one for service professionals. Since AQUA just so happens to have three editors, we each tackle a segment and make it our own. This is my third year developing the retail report, and I think I learn more with each passing year.
This year's retail survey asked you about the strength of your businesses, how you feel about the future, how you cope with competition, marketing, hot products and more. We also added a new section exclusively focusing on hot tubs, which provided invaluable insight that's sure to inform our coverage over the year.
This year's retail report also included a great piece by Rod Sterling about how retailers can survive, and thrive, in today's economy. It's a must-read story.
Without further ado, below is my video recap of the retail survey. Of course, we couldn't fit everything in there — that'd be a long video — so I hope you'll turn to the May 2015 issue for the full report.
Thanks to everyone who took the survey!
