Let’s just say if I was building or renovating a pool I’d call Vinnie Groppa. And for the record yes, stars do call him, but so do very regular people who still get the same star treatment!
Humble guy that Vinnie. Great sense of humor. Really nice human and super creative pool and backyard design visionary.
I wanted to give Vinnie his own star treatment, so I invited him into the studio to tell the great entrepreneurial story of his family’s 50-year-old pool business Gunite Pools of Westchester. It’s a good one. And a story that’s entering a new chapter… ‘expansion’.
Vinnie Groppa grew up in the family pool business, learned about the business from a very young age, and eventually took over the company. He now proudly employs his own son to help him run the day-to-day pool operations which every year involves a ridiculously busy scenario opening hundreds and hundreds of pools for the season to be ready to roll by Memorial Day weekend.
“Gunite Pools in Westchester was started a long time ago by my father, who was a builder at the time. He and my uncle started the company and Gunite Pools became very well-known in Westchester County in NY. I started my own little pool company, V Groppa pools, when I was like 15 years old. They were building pools but there was no service division. So at 15 I bought a car, the old Buick Skylark, I put a vacuum hose in a pole. I had this beautiful car, I could put my tools in, I had a pole hanging out the window, and I was on my way. The first year I had four customers. And then from there it just snowballed, and I got a great reputation. Eventually my dad retired, so I took on his company and now without giving that name up, I just incorporated the two together and now we have a beautiful service division.”
While the demand for pool service is high, demand for new pools has slowed a little bit since the pandemic However, the desire for well-designed, safe, and functional pools remains very strong.
Vinnie’s passionate about great pool service but his real passion lies in designing those gorgeous pools and transforming backyards into beautiful spaces. It’s what turns him on and what he’s looking forward to doing more of!
People Fly Vinnie In To Design Pools? Yes! He’s That Good! Lol
V. Groppa Pools & Gunite Pools of Westchester have always been known for a high level of integrity and excellence. They’re now expanding into Greenwich CT, Fairfield County CT, the Hamptons (where Vinnie has already designed quite a few pools) and other upscale locales where people have actually flown Vinnie in. Vinnie gets a real kick out of doing that.
“It makes me smile because I really love that part of the business, I love being creative and seeing something through till the end and stepping back and saying hey, you know what? Look what I did. Yeah, look what I built, look what I created. You can leave something behind, and people enjoy it and to see the smiles on their faces is just invaluable to me.”
Adding a Pool These Days increases the Value of Your Home.
Realtors and Builders always reach out to Vinnie when they’re trying to increase the value of a home sale. Either by adding a pool or renovating one, making a pool safer, or adding a hot tub, a waterfall, lighting etc. So, if anybody’s out there interested in knowing more about this, Vinnie is the guy who can educate you on how to enhance the value of your home. He’s always getting calls to do pool inspections for realtors and potential home buyers.
Let’s Talk About Pool Safety
Vinnie says, “So the code is you have to have a self-locking gate with a lock on top so you can actually lock the gate. And if, God forbid, you forget to close the gate, it automatically closes behind you.
Another code is that every door leading to the backyard within the fenced-in area must have some type of alarm on it. So, if the mother of the house is upstairs and she’s getting dressed, and the child’s on the first floor and decides he/she is going to go for a walk out the back, the mother is alerted to that when the child opens the door.”
What Else Does Vinnie see Trending in Pool Safety?
“The most effective thing right now in nine out of ten pools I’m building is that they are equipped with an automatic cover. So, it’s almost like peace of mind where you close that cover. It’s like locking your door to your house. You know this is something that every parent with a small child should have but the only thing with that is your pool must be a rectangle. “
When Somethings Wrong with Your Pool Make It Right – Right Away.
“95-98% of our pools, we do weekly service. So my guys are my eyes and if there’s anything that’s wrong, they’ll shoot me a picture right away and we reach out to the client and we tell them, safety’s first. This is dangerous and we want to repair it, we want to take care of it. Give us the okay and we’ll take care of it right away’
Does Everybody Want a Rectangle Pool?
“I go in a backyard and immediately I’ll tell you what the backyard dictates. It’s like a palette and you can see what type of backyard people have, what type of house they have. Is it modern? Is it colonial, does it warrant a free form pool? If it’s very natural in the back, I’d love to put something with a waterfall. “
It’s instinct after all these years with Vinnie Groppa. He just knows what kind of pool would work and flow on on a piece of property at first glance.
If you’ve got or want a pool, you need a Vinnie! LOL
V Groppa Pools and Gunite Pools of Westchester(and beyond now) have a stellar reputation founded on integrity, loyalty and availability. Get in touch Vinnie Groppa at Gunite Pools of Westchester at 914-769-3513 or at gunitepoolsofwestchester.com.
Meanwhile enjoy meeting the ‘pool artist to stars’ Vinnie Groppa in this podcast of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show. If You’d rather read than listen the transcript of the audio is below.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
6
0:00:00
And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show!
3
0:00:03
Okay, now I’m happy because my buddy Vinnie Groppa is in the studio. Hi everybody, I’m Debbie Nigro. I’ve been waiting for Vinnie to come in because I’ve been dying to introduce him to everybody. He is the guy in the pool industry. You know when you grow up in a family business and you learn from when you were a little kid how to do things really well that your father did and then you just keep going and
1
0:00:28
going and going all of a sudden you’re old enough that it’s your company and you’re like, oh, I got to run this thing. So Vinnie has gotten to the point in his career where his real passion and love, besides taking care of everybody’s pools, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pools
1
0:01:01
and building pools and designing pools, is the design process, the art, the vision when he walks into somebody’s backyard and goes, oh, I know, and then he does it and people are like, wow, I’ve never seen anything like it. So welcome Vinnie Groppa to my show finally.
3
0:01:15
Say hello.
5
0:01:16
Hey guys.
4
0:01:17
I’m moving my microphone.
1
0:01:19
Vinnie, relax babe. How you doing? We both had trouble getting into the studio today because it was crazy traffic, but you’re just crazy busy this time of year. You told me that you don’t even get a chance to relax for a second once pool season starts and then you just have to, people call you all day and night and day and night
1
0:01:35
because the pools need to be open now, correct?
2
0:01:37
Yes, that’s correct.
1
0:01:38
So how many pools do you have to open? Like hundreds and hundreds?
2
0:01:42
Yeah, we open hundreds of pools. It all has to be done pretty much by Memorial Day. That’s the target date. And people want it now. Yeah, they want it now. And up here in Greenwich and Westchester,
2
0:01:55
it’s a little more stressful. People are a little bit more demanding, a little bit more money than everybody else. This is great. But you know, every year I’m surprised, but it’s the same every year. It’s very stressful from like April 1st to maybe July 1st, and then we get to relax a
1
0:02:17
little bit. Yeah, you know how to relax. I know you when you get a chance, you do relax. So very interesting how we met. Let’s talk about that because I like to be authentic. And then we want to talk about really how to keep people safe with their pools this
1
0:02:28
summer because I really worry about the kids and the pets and, you know, just dumb things happening that turn into tragedies. But Vinnie and I met through a psychic who was a guest on my show. And she’s a friend of mine, Francine Tessler came I hadn’t seen her in forever. Called me out of the blue.
1
0:02:43
She’s said I’m thinking about, and you know, when a psychic is thinking about you after 20 years, you like gotta call back like, yeah, what are you thinking about? So, we ended up enjoying each other on the phone I invited her on the show because I wanted to shine a light on her talent – She’s always had something special and then a couple weeks later She wanted to thank me for the opportunity to be on the show
1
0:03:00
So she invited me for a drink and to talk as we were girlfriends back in the day So there’s Vinnie who’s having a little bite after work at the bar next to us where we were talking And she goes oh there you go. That’s just that’s your new sponsor Vinnie – Vinnie you have the pool company right?, and I go, you know she might be right. So me and Vinnie bonded.
2
0:03:19
Immediately.
1
0:03:20
Immediately. Had a big laugh, our six or ten, and decided to talk a little bit. And getting to know him, I’m like, you know, wow, I really love what you do, and I’d be very proud and honored to have you as a best-in-class sponsor on my show. So thank you very much, Vinnie, and Gunite Pools and V. Groppa Pools. I just want to ask you about the V. Groppa versus Gunite Pool.
1
0:03:39
Shouldn’t it be one name?
2
0:03:40
So Gunite Pools in Westchester was started a long time ago by my father, who was a builder at the time. Him and my uncle started the company. And Gunite Pools became renowned and very well-known in Westchester. I started my own little pool company when I was like 15 years old. Very entrepreneurial? Yeah, so they were building pools
2
0:04:08
but there was no service division. So you saw that at 15? Yeah, so at 15 I bought a car, the old Buick Skylark, I put a vacuum hose in a pole. Could you drive at 15? I was driving at… Shh, don’t tell anybody. The legal Italian driving age is really 14. I had this beautiful car, I could put my tools in, I had a pole hanging out the window, and I was on my way.
2
0:04:40
The first year I had four customers. Now it’s great. And then from there it just snowballed ,and I got a great reputation. And then eventually my dad retired, so I took on his company and now we’ve, without giving that name up, I just incorporated the two together and now we have a beautiful service division.
1
0:05:02
Your sons work with you now. What a great tradition to keep the family business. It’s very hard to keep a family business going through generations because not every family’s kids have the know-how and the ability to keep it going. So to your credit, and I’m sure your father is proud.
2
0:05:20
So me and my dad, we could work close, but we couldn’t work together.
1
0:05:25
That’s understandable.
2
0:05:26
That’s how Italians go. But I love my father, we’re very, very close, but we could never work together. But we could do jobs together, as long as we both had our own separate business. But my son actually works with me and I’m happy to have him, to see him every day. That’s beautiful. It’s nice to have the tradition continue.
1
0:05:47
Okay, so now I meet you and I know you’re 50 years in business, but okay, you’re open minded, you’re a relevant guy, you’re looking to do more fun things with what you know how to do. And you said that your dream right now would be to be more of a designer and really get the joy that gives you pure joy And people like actually flown you where who just flew you somewhere to design their pool Nantucket or something
1
0:06:08
He gets flown around to design pools. That’s how good he is and that makes you smile, right?
2
0:06:13
It makes me smile because I really love that part of the business I love being creative and seeing something through till the end and stepping back and say hey, you know what look look what I did Yeah, look what I built, look what I created. You can leave something behind and people enjoy it and to see the smiles on their faces is just
1
0:06:32
invaluable to me. Plus, you know, adding a pool these days, as I understand it, if you have a home, increases the value of your home. So if anybody’s out there in the real estate industry and needs some information about this, Vinnie, of course, is the guy who can educate you on how to enhance the value of your home.
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0:06:50
And it didn’t used to be like that. Somebody actually, I was talking to somebody about this the other day, after the pandemic hit, it became important because a lot of people were staying home and they were building outdoor kitchens and they weren’t going on vacations and stuff like that. So over the last five years, owning a pool or having a pool has definitely increased the value of your property a lot.
1
0:07:16
People who don’t have pools are very jealous of people who have pools on hot days and try to make friends. There’s a company, I’m just going to throw it out, it’s called resortpass.com, that actually rents, lets you rent…
2
0:07:26
It’s huge in California, yeah.
1
0:07:28
They’re all over the country. They let you rent somebody’s pool for the day, like at a hotel or a spa, and you pay a certain amount of money. I’m like, well, that’s a good idea. Other people, people with homes should do that too. Instead of an Airbnb, put the pool in.
2
0:07:47
In California that’s a huge thing for private homes. Private homes? Yeah, they rent out their backyards. Yeah, it happens all the time. Over here people are a little more wary because of insurance issues. Yeah, they don’t want anybody in their pool.
2
0:08:00
But back in California, or out in California, it’s a huge industry. Somebody was a genius. They said, hey, you know what, let’s go. Airbnb it.
1
0:08:09
Okay, so I want to talk about some important pool safety stuff, because there’s nothing like enjoying a pool and nothing worse than having something go wrong at a pool at your house. One of the most effective ways to prevent accidents is to make sure the pool is securely fenced with a self-latching gate. So is that what you tell people?
2
0:08:28
So the code is you have to have a self-locking gate with a lock on top so you can actually lock the gate. And if, God forbid, you forget to close the gate, it automatically closes behind you.
1
0:08:42
Yeah, that’s important. So that’s super important. For children, pets, and anybody who might wander, right?
2
0:08:46
Another code is that every door leading to the backyard within the fenced-in area has to have some type of alarm on it. So if you’re the mother of the house is upstairs and she’s getting dressed, the child’s in the first floor and decides she’s going to go for a walk out the back the mother is alerted to that when the child opens the door.
1
0:09:08
Very important. I never heard that one. Good one. Is that a state-of-the-art safety feature these days? There’s automatic pool covers. People have pool alarms that let you know when somebody enters the water. What do you hear?
2
0:09:25
The most effective thing right now is nine out of ten pools I’m building right now are equipped with an automatic cover. So it’s almost like peace of mind where you close that cover and you know that you have peace of mind it’s like locking your door to your house you know this is something that every parent with a small child like we have to have this and you know the only thing with that is your pool has to be a rectangle it has to be you know rectilinear for this. Oh that’s interesting because you can’t have a free
2
0:09:59
form pool you know. Which you do a lot of too though. Yeah, yeah, I like to do that.
1
0:10:04
Good question, how many people want free form pools versus rectangle pools, versus spas and hot tubs? I mean, you do it all, so.
2
0:10:12
Yeah, so I go in the backyard and immediately I’ll tell you what the backyard dictates. It’s like a palette and you can see what type of backyard they have, what type of house they have. Is it modern? Is it colonial, does it warrant a free form pool? It’s very natural in the back, I’d love to put something with a waterfall.
1
0:10:33
You’re the pool artist, you really are a pool artist, I mean you’re the pool artist of the stars, I know you have celebrity clients, you do, and you’re so humble, I think that’s why I love you so much, and so funny, we have the same sense of humor, we just love laughing. Let’s stick with the safety thing just a little bit more, because education, it’s really important to educate everybody in the family. And everybody needs to know how to swim, understand basic water safety rules, keep life-saving equipment like life rings and reaching poles accessible,
1
0:11:00
and make sure everybody knows how to use them, right? I imagine that everybody has those things, or do most people?
2
0:11:06
It’s mandatory in a commercial swimming pool. So there’s a list of items that you need to have in a commercial swimming pool. And the Board of Health goes around during the summer, and they warrant that. They want it there, and they’ll violate you if you’re not. Unfortunately, it’s not like that in a backyard pool.
2
0:11:24
But those safety devices are highly recommended.
1
0:11:28
Yeah, and then you make sure that people have, in regular inspections, or they should have, of all their equipment, the filters, the pumps, the drains, so that nothing malfunctions, everything’s operating safely. That’s part of what your company does?
2
0:11:40
We go out, most of our pools, 95-98% of our pools, we do weekly service. So my guys are my eyes and if there’s anything that’s wrong, they’ll shoot me a picture right away and we reach out to the client and we tell them, safety’s first. This is dangerous and we want to repair it, we want to take care of it. Give us the okay and we’ll take care of it right away.
1
0:12:02
And then the weather is unpredictable in the summer so you want to make sure people know that lightning, get out of the water, very big danger, you know, always keep an eye on the forecast. What’s trending in the pool industry this year? Is it still going like, you know, the way it was? I know it’s backed off a little since the pandemic.
1
0:12:19
Not everybody needs to move out of wherever they were for a tab of pool because they think
2
0:12:23
their life’s going to be over and they can’t go anywhere anymore well it definitely came to a screeching halt after after the pandemic yeah the three years during the pandemic were crazy unfortunately yeah you know it was a horrible time but we profited because everybody wants to stay home yeah and we did a lot of pools but right now everything has slowed down and you know people were just taking their time. Yeah that’s okay but Vinnie is
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0:12:52
the guy if you’re gonna put in a new pool especially if you’re building a home you’re a builder or you have plans or you want to enhance the value of your home if you have kids you want to make sure it’s safe if you want to make sure your pool is up to par you want to call Gunite Pools of Westchester and V Grappa Pools you can check them out at Gunite Pools of Westchester dot com you can call them at nine one four seven six nine three five one three and cheers to a summer filled with fun
1
0:13:17
and peace of mind. Vinnie Groppa, you’re the best. I’m so glad you’re a… Thank you so much, Debbie. I’m so glad… Do you have a pool? Because I need to take a swim in a pool. I do not have a pool. I imagine as a pool guy you might have access to a pool. I need to take a dip. I get very hot in the summer. Hot women are dangerous, Vinnie, in the summertime. lol
Transcribed with Cockatoo
