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During Peak Season, This Area Fixture Is Making Up for Lost Weeks

Ted Hebert surveys the line outside his store — well, roughly one-third of it, anyway.

When BusinessWest recently caught up with Teddy Bear Pools and Spas owner Ted Hebert, he was surveying a line of customers around his Chicopee property that ran roughly 40 deep.

The wait to reach the premises was about 45 minutes — typical on most days recently, Hebert said, although it can reach an hour or more. And it would be longer still if the store was still letting just 10 customers in at a time, but Teddy Bear was recently approved for 20.

“We worked with the Health Department and got it up to 20 customers at a time, and we have not seen a letup since we opened on March 18,” he noted. “I’ve never seen it like this. It’s nuts.”

Compare that to the middle of March, when the governor’s orders forced Teddy Bear to close its doors.

“That didn’t really kill us because it wasn’t pool season yet. But it hurt us a little bit — we have hundreds, if not thousands, of spas and hot tubs out there, and those people do need water chemistry.”

So customers would leave water samples outside the door, and Teddy Bear employees would conduct the water chemistry and then deliver whatever products they needed to their homes — sometimes 70 or 80 deliveries a day. Hebert jokingly referred to this period as ‘TedEx.’

“We weren’t making a lot of money; we were charging 10 bucks per delivery, as far as Palmer and Monson, and we grouped them up,” he recalled. “We had a lot of fun meeting customers.”

From a safe distance, of course. In fact, Hebert put off the start of pool-installation season, which usually begins in April, out of concern for customers — not just their physical health, but their anxiety about being around other people.

“Our reputation means more to me than money, and I didn’t want to have my trucks out there,” he recalled. “A lot of customers — a lot of citizens — are scared of the unknown, so I didn’t want my trucks out there, guys doing construction, and we held off. We probably could have been out there, but we didn’t want to take a chance. So we started in May, four weeks behind.”

May brought a gradual opening of the retail store as well. “We were trying to figure out how to open, and we were able to do curbside for a few days, but it was still a lot of work. People had to go online and pay for it,” he explained.

“Our reputation means more to me than money, and I didn’t want to have my trucks out there. A lot of customers — a lot of citizens — are scared of the unknown, so I didn’t want my trucks out there, guys doing construction, and we held off.”

But then he started working with local officials — entities like the City Council, Mayor John Vieau, the Health Department, and the Police Department — on what it would take to be deemed an essential retailer so he could open the store to foot traffic. Through the city, he appealed to the governor’s office and was indeed deemed essential. The key selling point, he said, was the water-chemistry testing service.

“We ended up putting together what you see at the store now — this line with every six feet marked,” he said. “We have signage everywhere and a sanitizing station as you go in and go out.”

Meanwhile, carriages are sprayed with disinfectant after every use, employees interact with customers from behind plastic shields, Hebert himself greets people in line to answer their questions before they enter, and everyone, of course, must wear a mask. “If you don’t have one, which is seldom, we’ll offer you a free mask,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to make it safe for them — the customers and my employees. We just want them to be healthy and safe.”

The first few days, traffic was parked up to a quarter-mile away; it didn’t help that roadwork narrowed East Street that first week. “Traffic was bad the first week, so we rented the church parking lot around the corner,” he added, noting that the store plans to make a donation to the church.

Sales of new pools are slightly down, partly because people were buying hot tubs and pools online during the shutdown — “I’m old school; I never thought I’d see that day,” he said of this more impersonal sales experience — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the late start has installers scrambling. “I’m paying my guys extra to work Saturdays. I’m running 60 people servicing pools.”

And 2020 could see some later-than-normal action — as families cancel vacations, they might be inspired to invest in a backyard experience. “Even if you get a pool at the end of July, you still get four to eight weeks out of it.”

As noted earlier, the traffic subsided a little when the state approved a 20-customer capacity, but lines still regularly stretch into the dozens, as BusinessWest discovered.

“I’ve never in my life seen anything like this,” Hebert said. “But I have very considerate customers. No one’s fighting. It amazed me. They’ve been very patient and understanding.”

—Joseph Bednar