About Poolaroo
From our Founder
Thanks for checking out Poolaroo!
I’m Roy Steves, and I started in the pool supplies industry 15 years ago, when I joined a small retailer as a senior web developer. For example, I built our warehouse-management platform, moving tens of millions of dollars’ worth of cleaners, chemicals, heaters, and parts each season.
As the site took off, my role expanded from engineering to marketing, and within two years our 20-person team had doubled. Not long after, our company was acquired by the nation’s largest pool supplies retail chain, where I served as VP of Digital Marketing, fine-tuning the online experience for a customer base of millions. My last project there was a customer survey system that would have allowed them to continue to improve, even after I left, as it quickly summarized hundreds of thousands of surveys customers kindly provided us each week.
In 2015, I co-founded a search-marketing agency with fellow Ecommerce veteran Shilo Jones. After nearly a decade of helping other online stores grow, I realized two things:
- To keep my advice sharp, I needed to be hands-on with operations again.
- Since my old company’s acquisition, no one had quite taken over the customer-centric niche in online pool supplies.
Poolaroo is my answer. We’re building a store that makes pool and spa maintenance easy, backed by real humans who’ve shipped, marketed, and supported these products for years.
Our plan is simple: assemble a great team of the finest Ecommerce and pool supplies professionals, treat customers like neighbors, and solve their problems faster than anyone else.
Curious about the journey or the people behind it? Check my LinkedIn profile, or drop us a note on the Contact page! I love to talk shop.
Real people, real team.
Launched in 2025, Poolaroo is still definitely a small team, but what we lack in numbers, we more than make up for with hard work and genuine care for our customers.
In the age of Artificial Intelligence, we expect that it's going to be harder and harder to trust online entities. To counter that, we're investing extra effort into transparency into our organization, behind-the-scenes content, and the best product photography we can create.
As an example, here's the process of building our product photography studio, starting with the first time I arrived at our new space, brimming with potential!
Moving In!
Once we ordered and assembled the photography gear, we started to bring in the material we would need to build the backdrop cyclorama.
This shot is from up on top of the bathroom, which is oddly also where the cable internet port was, so good thing we had a ladder!
Construction Begins!
First, we put MDF panels on the floor and wall, to make it easier to putty, sand, and paint--especially repeatedly over time, as wear and tear is inevitable as we grind through thousands of products.
At this point, we hadn't bought the thin plyboard that would need to bend to fit the curve of the cyclorama, so there was some experimentation to find what radius would balance the usable floor space with the practical limitations of the material.
Copy/Paste in Real Life!
With the geometry worked out, we burned through several jigsaw batteries cutting copies of the final curve shape.
And yes, we're Harbor Freight fans. Who isn't?
We Need Reinforcements!
The 2x4 braces not only gave the ribs structural support, they give us something to pin into when we're bending the plyboard into shape.
No skateboarding allowed!
With the thin plyboard pinned into place, we puttied up all of the seams and gaps as best we could. This would be only the first of several rounds of puttying between rounds of sanding.
Oh, so much DUST.
It is at this point that we realized we should have assembled the photo gear after building the backdrop. The putty sanded to a cornstarch texture, which covered everything in the space.
Nothing some quality time with a shop vac and some box fans with air filters bungied on couldn't fix, though.
Finally, several coats of matte primer!
The idea behind this style of backdrop is that we can just slap a fresh coat on it whenever it gets too scuffed up. We use cleanroom booties and have a rollup carpet to spread those out, but it's so much easier to work with than a paper roll. Besides, few paper rolls approach the scale needed for pool equipment!
Ready for action!
With a few finishing touches, we were ready for our first industry rep visit! We're a remote team, from all over the country, but this is our physical base of operations, and we're proud of how it came out.
And from here on, the quality of the product presentation of our site should improve a bit more every day!
Would you like to know more?
Obviously, we needed a name that was memorable, unique, and relevant. After sifting through dozens of alternatives, it was clear that "Poolaroo" was all of those, plus it had the kind of playful sound that fit with the summer fun we aim to support. While many have noted the similarity to "kangaroo," that's a coincidence, as we're based a few thousand miles from Australia. Rather, the repeated 'o's are intended to have a rhythm with the 'o's in 'Pool'. We think it sounds a bit silly, but trustworthy--just like us.
We're a remote team, but our founder is in Salem, Oregon. That might not be a major pool supplies market, but where there aren't many pool supplies stores, having a good online alternative is all the more critical.
This also allows us to bring on the best talent from wherever they live. Maybe a former pool equipment installer lives three states away! We're tech-savvy enough to make that kind of thing work, and we think we're stronger for it.
There are three reasons we might not carry every pool supply product you're familiar with.
- Manufacturers have to protect their brands from knock-offs and metaphorical scalpers, so they don't offer online stores all of the exact same products they offer to brick-and-mortar stores. There are often similar alternatives they do allow online, though, so we will do our best to ensure we have the right tool for the job.
- Freight (or LTL) shipping requires quite a bit more support to be sure customers are ready to receive their shipment, so for now, we're focusing on the vast majority of products that can ship via typical parcel carriers.
- Maybe we should! There are hundreds of thousands of individual products in the pool supplies niche, and it takes time to source, photograph, and curate them all. If we're missing something, let us know, and we'll see if we can source it for you through the dozens of warehouses across the country that we're partnered with.
While generative AI is a powerful tool, we feel it isn't appropriate in every use case. As a result, we use it for programming stuff, design elements, lifestyle images, proofreading, and other situations where the output is essentially decorative.
But we DO NOT use it for product photography or the specific claims in product descriptions. We are responsible for the accuracy of that kind of content, and so all of our product content is either directly from the manufacturer, or the personal responsibility of our team of humans.
Further, we never feed any of your data to AI agents. We treat AI as essentially unsecured, and have strict information management experience to keep everyone safe.
Nope! Although our name isn't related to Kangaroos, there is a similarly named pool service business in Australia. If you're in that market, read more here.