After 40 years at the helm, Steve Hammock retired from Watkins Wellness in 2022.
Hammock got his start in the Phoenix hot tub market in 1982, but was determined to make his way to San Diego where his family was from. A friend knew the owners at hot tub maker Watkins Manufacturing (now Watkins Wellness) and recommended him. “At that time they were looking for somebody they could get for super cheap who knew something about advertising, and here I am,” Hammock says.
The industry intrigued him. “I was enamored with the product concept, the idea that you could have this appliance that you could plug into your backyard that gave you all these great benefits,” Hammock says. “What was striking to me is that you couldn’t find anybody who didn’t like the idea of sitting in hot water. And yet nobody had one.”
So in the early years of the industry, Hammock set out at Watkins to create demand. “As a marketer and a storyteller, I remember thinking, if everybody knew everything that I knew about these products, everyone would want one,” he says. “Back then the industry was five or six years old. It was sort of the Wild West. We were operating under the radar and you could do anything you could think of to create demand for these products. And that’s what we did.”
Hammock is proud of the company culture he helped created at Watkins, where he worked to treat every employee with respect. “All of our values are excellent, but the one I would put my finger on is transparency,” he says. “We were honest about our situation with our people every day.”
He’s always told people he’d one day try surfing: “I live next to an ocean, and I’ve never tried it.” There’s also a lot to experience with his family. Hammock and his wife have five grown children. “Life is going to be changing a little bit for the good,” he says, “so we’re just going to take it easy and see what comes up.”
