MEET + GREET
Making a Splash Owner of Heritage Pools, LLC, Michael Gesmond, opened the doors to his James Island home and shared the story of his life in the Lowcountry and history in the pool industry.
How did you get started in the pool business? The first time I was ever introduced to a pool was riding with my dad on an excavator when I was eight. I’ve been building pools ever since. I never thought I would choose this career path, but here I am in the industry and I've been able to build all kinds of pools throughout the years. Tell me a little bit about you and your family. I am married to my wife Jessie, who is a nurse practitioner, and we just celebrated our second wedding anniversary. I actually met her 12 years ago after I made one of my first pool sales. We have two awesome golden retrievers, Maddie and Sulley. We enjoy doing CrossFit together, traveling, cooking out, and spending time in our backyard by the pool with our family and friends. How did Heritage Pools, LLC first get off of the ground? I was 18 when I moved to Charleston and I had just started Heritage Pools with the few meager supplies I had brought with me. I was using the closet in my apartment for my first 'warehouse' and from there I rented two public storage units. Af ter I bought my house, I started working out of the shed in my backyard and then I f inally purchased a property with a 2,000
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CH+D • Summer 2017
square foot warehouse and an office building. At that point, I had found the core members of my team who are still with me today. How did the I-Beam Brace technology that Heritage Pools, LLC uses start? The I-Beam Brace is from my “pool dad” and he created it in 1984. We are the premier company utilizing the technology and we are the only ones that can use it in South Carolina. He invented it because of the problems he was having with the ground freezing and thawing up where he lives in New York. We brought it down here because of the unstable ground issues that are commonly found in the Lowcountry. Since your business only does custom work for new pools, what trends are you seeing that people are looking for? Yes, every pool is completely custom, from the surfaces that we install, to the design, and all of the components really. Right now, we are seeing a lot of cool things, but one of the biggest is the shapes of the pools. We are doing a lot of really neat designs and that is a lot of fun! For more information, call Heritage Pools, LLC at (843) 762-3417 or visit swimhere.com.