After over 30 years operating as The Pool Place, the large warehouse on Perimeter Drive donned a new name starting Feb. 18.
Now operating as The Great Backyard Place, this widely-known business will continue to offer the same pool, spa, and furniture products, but with a wider offering of backyard living products.
“We want our customers to know we’re the same family that’s been serving the Chattanooga area for three generations,” said Frank May, CEO. “Great Backyard is not a divorce from our past, but rather it’s the natural evolution of our business.”
The business began in 1953 as an East Ridge filling station known as A&M and run by May’s grandfather, Frank G. May. Transitioning from a pet shop to toys and hobbies, the business finally moved to Lee Highway where it firmly focused on backyard living by selling pools as The Pool Place in 1979.
Three generations and four additional locations later, Great Backyard goes beyond pools to offer everything from outdoor kitchens and grills to backyard fire pits.
“We want to make creating the ideal outdoor living area as painless and hassle-free as possible by combining the casual furniture store with the grill shop and the pool store,” said May. “The name The Pool Place just didn’t fit that vision anymore.”
After the Chattanooga reveal, Great Backyard will celebrate reveals at its Cleveland, Knoxville, and Maryville locations throughout February and into early March. This included the opening of a new store in Asheville, N.C., on Feb. 13 and a new central distribution warehouse in Knoxville.
Source: The Great Backyard