The Davis family’s half century at Hayward, the pool equipment maker
Hayward dates to 1925, but two generations of the Davis family took it from regional supplier to global brand before agreeing to sell in 2017.
Elizabeth, NJ
In 2017, Robert Davis was getting ready to step away from a company his family had controlled for more than half a century. He was co-chair of Hayward Industries, a New Jersey manufacturer of residential and commercial swimming pool equipment. That year the family agreed to sell Hayward to a partnership led by the buyout firm CCMP Capital Advisors and the investment firm MSD Partners, joined by Alberta Investment Management Corp.
“As I approach retirement, I am very confident this next generation of ownership will carry on the Hayward tradition and that our legacy is in excellent hands,” Davis said in remarks reported by Pool & Spa Marketing in 2017.
The Davises did not start Hayward. The company was founded in 1925, which made it 92 years old when the sale was announced. The family bought control in 1964 and led it through two generations. The names that come up in the record are Oscar and Robert Davis. In those five decades Hayward grew from a regional pool equipment supplier into what Pool & Spa Marketing called one of the most recognized brands in North America. The Australian trade magazine Splash went further, describing Hayward as having the most recognized brand and the largest installed base of pool equipment on the continent.
That is a long run for one family in a business that sells to backyards and public pools. It is also a story of steady accumulation. Product lines were added one at a time and companies were bought one at a time, until a regional supplier had facilities on four continents. The 2017 agreement was meant to end that era, with the deal expected to close in the third quarter of the year.
Hayward makes the equipment that keeps a pool running. By 2017 its catalog covered pumps, filters, heaters, automatic cleaners, salt chlorinators, automation, lighting, safety products and flow control equipment, and the company also made industrial flow control products. Its brand names at the time included Super Pump, MaxFlow, TriStar, Navigator, StarClear, AquaRite and OmniLogic.
The list shows how far the company had come. A firm founded in 1925 was, by the end of the Davis era, selling what Pool & Spa Marketing described as Internet of Things driven automation and controls, alongside the pumps and filters that had long been its core.
Sanitizing was one area where the trade itself shifted. Pool & Spa Marketing reported in 2013 that salt chlorine generation had been used as a primary pool sanitizer as early as the 1960s, and that more than three million salt-chlorinated pools existed worldwide, a number it said was growing significantly every year. Most of those systems were on residential pools, the magazine reported, though within the previous decade the equipment had begun making inroads into commercial pools. Salt chlorinators were part of Hayward’s lineup by the time of the sale.
The company also grew by buying others. In 2011 Hayward bought ClevaQuip, an Australian sanitization control company that had been a Hayward distributor. In 2014 it acquired Poolvergnuegen, a maker of automatic pool cleaners based in Santa Rosa, California. In 2016 it bought Kripsol Group, a maker of residential and commercial pumps, filters and accessories headquartered in Yuncos, Spain. Another Spanish company, Sugar Valley, which made automation systems, water chemistry and sanitization products, was also among its recent purchases when the sale was announced.
Splash reported that the company had built its global footprint through acquisitions in North America, Europe and Australia. In 2017 Hayward was headquartered in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and had facilities in the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Spain and China.
The family was not running the company day to day by the end. Clark Hale was president and chief executive, and he was expected to keep that job, along with the rest of the executive staff, after the sale.
“Hayward and its employees are forever grateful for the vision and leadership Oscar and Robert Davis have provided,” Hale said in remarks reported by Pool & Spa Marketing in 2017.
Splash reported that it would be business as usual at Hayward’s Australian arm, with no change in operations or staffing there or overseas. Tim Pettman, director of sales and marketing for Hayward Pool Products Canada, said the Canadian business would carry on as before and its management team would remain intact, Pool & Spa Marketing reported.
The buyers were investors. CCMP, with offices in New York, Houston and London, put its money mainly into middle-market companies in consumer retail, industrial and health care. MSD Partners had been formed in 2009 by the principals of MSD Capital, a firm set up in 1998 to manage the capital of Michael Dell and his family. Alberta Investment Management Corp., based in Edmonton, was one of Canada’s largest institutional investment managers.
Mark McFadden, a managing director at CCMP, framed the deal around the family’s record. “Through two generations of Davis family leadership, the company has grown from a regional pool equipment supplier to a global leader with a track record of product innovation and world class supply chain and manufacturing capabilities,” he said in remarks reported by Splash in 2017.
Kevin Brown, a managing director at MSD Partners, talked about the long term. “Hayward is a perfect fit with MSD Private Capital Group’s strategy of investing in companies that can deliver stability and growth over the long term,” he told Splash in 2017.
Hale was plain about what would follow. “We now look forward to partnering with CCMP and MSD Partners to continue our investments in product innovation, geographic expansion, and synergistic acquisitions,” he said, as reported by Splash.
The buying went on after the family left. In 2019 Hale departed after seven years with the company, and Hayward named Kevin P. Holleran president and chief executive. A year earlier, Hayward had closed on its purchase of Paramount Leisure Industries, an Arizona company that supplied in-floor cleaning systems, the kind built into the floor of the pool itself. It was the same move the Davises had made for years: find a company that does one thing well, and bring it under the Hayward name.