TRIO'S GAMBLE HARDENS INTO HOT COMMODITY PORTABLE TUBS HAVE FOUND SUCCESS.

Byline: EUGENE TONG Staff Writer

VALENCIA -- Tom Thornbury turned a hot-water soaking into a multimillion-dollar business.

As founder and chairman of Valencia-based Softub, Thornbury, 64, built a company around a portable hot tub fashioned from foam and vinyl invented by his partners 20 years ago.

It's a trip that took an idea from a relative's Los Angeles garage to thermal springs-lovin' Reykjavik -- the capital of Iceland, which is among Thornbury's best customers.

``People there have a natural affinity for hot-water therapy,'' he said during an interview Friday. ``It's one of the highest number (of tubs) per capita the population.''

Thornbury founded the business when he and his partners John Popovich and Roc Fleishman devised a lightweight hot tub. It's molded from spiral-wound foam and covered with soft vinyl -- hence Softub -- and comes complete with jets and an electric motor/heater that plugs into any wall socket.

``One of my partners had spent a lot of time in Asia,'' Thornbury said. ``He was especially enamored with the Japanese soaking tub concept.'' The Japanese often relax in a tub of scalding-hot water after a shower.

He described Popovich as a ``Thomas Edison-type of guy.''

``He had many ideas -- that doesn't mean they were all good,'' Thornbury quipped.

Yet Thornbury saw potential in this idea -- he quit his job at a medical equipment company and devoted time to raising the $500,000 the trio needed for startup capital.

``I went from a stable, corporate environment into a garage,'' he said. ``I wore my suit and tie to my one job. The next day, I was in Levi's and a sweat shirt.''

Thornbury said he made a list of 106 potential lenders -- and struck out with every single one of them. So it'd be a self-financed venture -- the trio pooled about $40,000 from savings and credit cards.

``We would often console ourselves -- the worst thing that could happen is we go bankrupt and lose $40,000,'' Thornbury said.

The first tub -- #001 -- was a two-seater covered with black vinyl with one jet connected to a 1-horsepower motor.

Thornbury sold it to his first customer, Patricia Sanford of Palmdale, out of a little storefront. She was suffering from back pain, and her masseuse had prescribed soaking in hot water, and she saw the tub in a newspaper ad.

``I knew I wanted it,'' Sanford, 69, said. ``It was in a strip mall, in a room about 10-by-10. The tub was in a platform in a corner, and it was running.

``(Thornbury) hit it with a baseball bat and showed me what it could do. I wrote a check right then and there.''

Since 1986, the tub has been refined -- it now features multiple jets, lights and comes in three sizes and a variety of colors. Most of the advances came from customer suggestions, Thornbury said. Prices now range from $3,000 to $4,000.

``What the inventor wants to make and what the market is willing to buy are often different things,'' he said.

The company also moved out of the garage and outgrew two other manufacturing plants in Pacoima and Chatsworth before arriving at Valencia in 2002, where it employs 80 out of its more than 200 workers throughout North America. Softub also has manufacturing plants in New Bedford, Mass., Mexico and Canada, and has distribution worldwide.

It remains privately held -- Thornbury said the revenues are between $25 million and $50 million.

As for Sanford, she has been a convert since that first $1,200 purchase -- she's now on her third tub.

``You wouldn't know by looking at me,'' she said. ``I have aches and pains like a lot of people do. There is absolutely nothing that soothes me as much as the Softub.''

eugene.tong(at)dailynews.com

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(color) Tom Thornbury is the founder of Valencia-based Softub, which has been making portable hot tubs for 20 years.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer