By: Mae Cornes
The founder of Bachmann Pools, Spas & Saunas started with one tub on a construction floor in 1985, and he still sells by the advice his Swiss-born father gave him
Fred Bachmann’s parents had a line they used about their son and water. He had to be the first one into the lake, the river, or the swimming pool, and the last one out. As a toddler, he was told he hated getting out of the bathtub.
That habit turned into a career. In 1985, at 23, he started the business that became Bachmann Pools, Spas & Saunas, which now runs showrooms in Madison and Brookfield and holds the top dealer award Hot Spring Spas gives a retailer. The habit explains why he went into water. His father explains how he has run the business since.
“My father would often advise me, you get what you pay for; buy something that will last,” Bachmann says. “Hence our top-of-the-line products in every category, and our ongoing commitment to training.”
A Name With Water in It
Bachmann’s father was born in Switzerland. As Bachmann tells it, the family name comes from Swiss ancestry and describes a man or a family that lives beside a stream or by the water. He draws a straight line from that name to the work he has done for four decades.
“Being in the water industry is my life’s passion, and it’s my family’s heritage,” he says.
The family’s working history in Madison was in building. The Bachmann construction company had been building and remodeling homes and renovating historic buildings in the city since 1954, so the son who loved water grew up in a family that made its living on houses and the people who lived in them.
One Tub on a Construction Floor
The start was close to accidental. Bachmann got into the spa business through a construction project, and he decided to put a hot tub on display in spare space inside the family’s construction building.
“I had a little bit of space in our construction building, so I showcased one hot tub on the floor,” he told Aqua magazine. “But I was quickly told that if I was going to be in the hot tub business, then I actually had to look like I was in the hot tub business.”
He took the advice. The single tub became a dedicated showroom in Madison, then a service department, then a second showroom in Brookfield, outside Milwaukee, which gave the company a base in the state’s largest metro area. The Brookfield showroom on West Capitol Drive opened in 2023, with a grand opening built around letting visitors try everything on the floor. The business that started with hot tubs now sells swim spas, swimming pools, saunas, and cold plunges as well, and the word “Saunas” has joined the company name.
Buying the Expensive Option on Purpose
The father’s rule shows up most clearly in what Bachmann chooses to stock. He carries a premium line in each category and builds the store around it. That means Hot Spring spas, Tylo saunas, Vigor cold plunges, Radiant swimming pools, Endless Pools swim systems and BioGuard water care products.
The range is narrow by design, and it costs more than the cheapest tub a buyer could find. The company’s answer is to let customers try before they pay. Shoppers are greeted by staff the company calls wellness consultants and are encouraged to book a test soak, and both showrooms keep spas and swim systems filled with water so a buyer can feel the difference in person.
Hot Spring, the brand at the center of each showroom, describes itself as the world’s best-selling hot tub brand, and its tubs are marketed heavily on energy efficiency, a point the Bachmanns have stressed when explaining the line on television. For a Wisconsin buyer, the running cost matters. A hot tub stays outdoors through winter after winter, which makes durability a practical question for a Madison household as much as a matter of taste.
The company describes its purpose as raising the standard of health and wellness in the communities it serves, and the product mix has followed that. Saunas and cold plunges are on the floor beside the hot tubs, and the Brookfield showroom opened with all of them in place, alongside Endless Pools swim systems, so a visitor could move from heat to cold to a swim in one visit, as Bachmann and his wife showed viewers of Milwaukee’s TMJ4 morning program.
That approach earned outside recognition in 2024, when Hot Spring Spas named the company its Locksin Thompson Dealer of the Year. The honor goes to one Hot Spring dealer a year.
A Business Run by Two
Bachmann runs the company with his wife, Kiya Bachmann, who is co-owner and has worked beside him for more than 25 years, joining after the business’s earliest years. The two front the company together in public, including several appearances on TMJ4, where they have walked viewers through the service and installation side of the business.
“It has been an incredible journey building this company together, from the ground up,” Bachmann wrote in a Madison Magazine piece marking the company’s 40th year.
The family structure matters to buyers in a practical way. A hot tub is a purchase that needs water care, servicing, and eventual replacement, and the people who sold it are still the people who own the business when the customer calls back. For a dealer whose pitch depends on things lasting, that continuity is part of the offer.
The Rule Still Holds
Forty-one years after one hot tub went on display in a construction building, Bachmann’s business runs on two inheritances. One is a surname tied to water. The other is a father’s advice about paying for quality and expecting it to last.
The showrooms are larger now, the product range runs from saunas to cold plunges, and the family name is on two storefronts. The standard Bachmann applies to what goes on the floor is the one he heard from his father, and Hot Spring’s top dealer award in 2024 is the clearest outside evidence that the standard works.
