Beyond the Roll-Up: A New Model for Preserving Main Street Legacies

SAN MATEO, CA – September 01, 2026 – For nearly four decades, Javier Payan built Payan Pools into a San Diego institution. Starting in 1987 with a modest $23,000 service route, he cultivated a reputation for quality and reliability, one backyard at a time. He wasn't looking to sell. Then, he met the founders of California Pool Partners (CPP), a new firm with a proposition that challenged the prevailing narrative of small business succession.

Across America, a quiet consolidation is reshaping the landscape of local economies. Private equity firms, armed with immense capital, are rolling up fragmented service industries—from HVAC and plumbing to landscaping and pool care. The model is ruthlessly efficient: buy dozens of small, independent operators, centralize functions, cut costs, and sell the larger entity for a significant profit. But this efficiency often comes at a cost to the community fabric, erasing local brand identities and replacing long-term stewardship with short-term optimization.

California Pool Partners is positioning itself as a direct counterpoint to this trend. With its formal launch, the firm is introducing an “owner-centric” platform that it claims prioritizes partnership over predation. It’s a system designed not just to acquire businesses, but to invest in them, professionalize their operations with modern technology, and preserve the very legacy that made them valuable in the first place.

A New Blueprint for the 'Legacy Sale'

The decision to sell a business built over a lifetime is rarely just about the money. It’s about legacy, employees who have become like family, and customer relationships nurtured over decades. The traditional private equity roll-up often fails to account for this human capital. New ownership can bring jarring changes: unfamiliar management, aggressive upselling, and a relentless focus on metrics that can alienate both staff and clients.

CPP’s model is built on a different foundation. Instead of a complete takeover, it offers a partnership. The firm centralizes back-office functions like finance and administration but leaves significant day-to-day operational authority with the local general manager—often the original owner. For Javier Payan, this was the deciding factor. “If I was to write down what it would take for me to sell this business, it was all right there,” he said. “They checked all my boxes.”

The structure is intentionally flexible, designed to align incentives rather than impose a rigid, one-size-fits-all formula. This approach directly addresses the primary fear of many small business owners: that a sale means the end of everything they worked to create. “Independent, locally rooted businesses built California's pool service industry,” said Evan Ferl, Co-Founder of California Pool Partners. “Our goal is to be the best long-term partner for those owners – helping them continue to build on what they've created while preserving the local relationships, reputation, and culture that made their businesses successful in the first place.”

From Clipboards to Code: Modernizing a Main Street Industry

The American pool service industry, valued at $8.8 billion in 2025, remains highly fragmented. It’s an ecosystem of thousands of small operators, many of whom still rely on paper routes and manual scheduling. This is precisely the inefficiency that attracts consolidators. CPP, however, sees an opportunity not for extraction, but for empowerment through technology.

The firm is deploying a suite of AI-forward systems tailored specifically for pool service. AI-powered route optimization software helps technicians travel more efficiently, reducing fuel costs and allowing for more service calls per day. Advanced water chemistry management tools can analyze data to predict chemical needs, ensuring healthier pools and less waste. Predictive maintenance algorithms monitor equipment to flag potential failures before they happen, preventing costly and frustrating downtime for homeowners.

This technological layer does more than just improve margins. It professionalizes the trade, freeing up technicians from tedious administrative tasks to focus on higher-value work and customer service. It provides a level of consistency and reliability that can be difficult for a small operator to achieve alone. By integrating these modern tools while retaining local management, CPP is testing a hypothesis: that you can achieve economies of scale without sacrificing the personal touch that defines neighborhood service.

The Economics of Partnership Over Predation

Nowhere is the opportunity for this model clearer than in California. The state is home to over 1.3 million residential pools, and its high labor costs and strict regulations contribute to the highest per-pool service revenue in the nation. This lucrative market makes it a prime target for investors. What makes CPP different, its founders argue, is its own ownership structure.

Mark Doody, Evan Ferl, and Eric Johnston own and operate the platform themselves, without the oversight of an external private equity fund. This independence is central to their philosophy. It removes the pressure to meet quarterly earnings targets or prepare for a quick flip, allowing them to make decisions that favor long-term health over immediate returns.

“We don't have anybody behind us pushing us to optimize something at the sake of service quality or employee satisfaction,” explained Eric Johnston, Co-Founder of CPP. “We work for the GM, not the other way around. We want the general manager to tell me how the business will best be impacted by our actions.” This inversion of the typical corporate hierarchy is fundamental to their system. It reframes the relationship from one of control to one of support, where the central platform exists to serve the needs of the local business.

Having already established operations in Los Angeles and San Diego and completed around 15 acquisitions, CPP is demonstrating a clear strategy of building regional density. This approach, combined with vertical integration in chemical handling, equipment, and technology, creates a robust operational ecosystem. The goal is not simply to own a collection of disparate businesses, but to build a cohesive and resilient network. By creating a system that allows veteran owners to scale their expertise and new owners to professionalize from the start, California Pool Partners is offering a compelling vision for a more sustainable and equitable future for Main Street.