Like many experts in the pool industry, Corinne “Corie” Kraft developed her business acumen and adventuresome spirit at an early age. And the recently retired president of Valley Pool & Spa, in Greater Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has generously shared her expertise and experience with others over the past three decades.
Her beginnings may have been humble, but they taught her crucial lessons that shaped her career.
“My parents owned and operated a recreational vehicle business where I began cleaning motor homes when I was 9, learned to sell the parts at 14 and sold campers, motor homes and truck caps at 16,” Kraft says. When she turned 19, they partnered in a home and office furniture company and opened two furniture stores that she managed for five years — and then the trajectory of her career changed.
She had been saving money to start her own company — a decidedly more glamorous high-end lingerie business. But, one night, she heard her grandparents discuss selling Valley Pool & Spa, their profitable, 20-year-old pool supply business. “I jumped right in and said, ‘I’ll buy it!’ ” she recalls. “I figured, why risk a startup when you have a successful business opportunity right in front of you?”
It was 1987, and Kraft was 24. She learned bookkeeping from her mother while her father taught her the importance of having, and following, a standard operating procedure and strategic business plan. Her grandfather helped Kraft and her new husband, Jeff — a great business partner, she says — for a few summer seasons. Valley Pool continued to thrive, opening five new retail locations over the following years.
As a successful businesswoman in a male-dominated industry, Kraft was also a good role model for employees like Rachael Pritz, who worked at Valley Pool from high school through college. Now vice president of RB Retail and Service Solutions, Pritz says, “She taught me a lot about business and the pool and spa industry, sharing her pool knowledge. She did a lot of training.”
“Training was, and still is, part of the Valley culture,” says Eric Cassidy, vice president for Valley Pool & Spa and Pool City Leisure Center. “It was her way of running a successful business.”
Kraft’s success also included an unexpected business venture. She was looking into software for her pool store but couldn’t find any with all the features she needed. So, in 2003, “I partnered up with a good friend of mine, Rick Brunori, and we wrote software for the pool and spa business,” she says. “We put it in my business first, and then shortly after, we formed a company, RBCK Enterprises, that launched RB Control Systems [now RB Retail and Service Solutions].”
Training played a large role in this new business, too.
“Corie spent a great deal of time training and consulting other small businesses,” Cassidy says. “She’d go to other pool businesses and train them on the software, then end up consulting and doing team training and business training.”
That led to conducting various seminars and classes for the industry, at Atlantic City and the Las Vegas pool shows. “Her seminars would be sold out; there’d be no more registrations, as people wanted to hear what she said,” Cassidy recalls. Kraft also played major leadership roles in industry organizations, such as APSP (now PHTA).
Kraft sold her half of the software business in 2016 to focus on her core pool business, which now included another unanticipated venture: Dreams to Screams, a seasonal Halloween costume store-within-a-store at all Valley Pool locations that she and Cassidy started in 2007. “It was a great opportunity, and such a fun business, too,” Kraft recalls. “It was enough of a business to give my husband and me the funding to carry us through the winter months.”
Awards from local media and vendors continued to follow, from one of Pittsburgh’s Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies and Top 100 Employers multiple times to Best Pool/Spa Retailer in the Nation by the United Aqua Group.
Just as the Halloween store began to phase out, another opportunity beckoned. Leslie’s Poolmart was interested in acquiring Valley Pool, “which was a great honor because they’re a good company,” Kraft says. She closed the deal with Leslie’s in 2018, which opened new doors for her and her husband. “They wanted to keep the ‘secret sauce’ that kept the company successful over the years intact.”
Her legacy is her leadership and her empathy for her employees.”
Eric Cassidy, Valley Pool & Spa / Pool City Leisure Center
While her husband retired in 2019, Kraft continued her involvement with Leslie’s as the company expanded locations and acquired Pool City Leisure Center. “This was a whole new business to dive into: patio furniture, billiards — I enjoyed it,” she says. “I stayed with Leslie’s because every year there was something new and exciting for me to do.”
Last summer, it was Kraft’s turn to retire. “I was ready to move on to the next chapter of my life and have a little more fun,” she says. That includes more boating in summer and snowbird time in Florida, more violin practice for her ongoing role as a violinist in the Edgewood Symphony Orchestra in Pittsburgh and finishing a science fiction novel she began writing 12 years ago.
Kraft departs the industry having made a profound impact on numerous businesses across the country, including her own, Cassidy says. “Her legacy is her leadership and her empathy for her employees.”
