Growing a Culligan Franchise

Forbes profiled Candice Shum, CEO of Culligan Water of Greater Kansas City, after a six-year run that took the company from $8 million to more than $22 million in revenue and grew the team from 4 employees to 80. Shum became CEO in 2019 and says one of her biggest shifts was getting people in the building who were “smarter than me,” including a CFO who eventually helped reshape the company’s relationship with lenders. That stronger financial footing helped make room for a sales director and an operations director with a military background. Shum also spent years building a relationship with the owner of a St. Joseph, Missouri dealership, calling every other month and taking him to lunch until he was ready to sell. When the price came in higher than the business was worth, she structured the deal through seller financing on the building, sending interest to the seller instead of a bank. The company story is a case study in hiring well, staying patient, and keeping solid relationship equity.

WaterWorld reported that the Water Quality Association is backing a bipartisan Senate drinking water bill that would reauthorize major federal water and wastewater infrastructure programs while creating a pilot program for certified point-of-use treatment. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously approved the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2026 on July 15, and the POU pilot would test how certified treatment systems can help communities respond faster to contaminants like PFAS and lead. WQA’s point is not that faucet-level treatment replaces traditional infrastructure, but that it can fill a very practical gap while pipes, plants, funding, and construction timelines move at their usual government-approved speed. The association also praised the Healthy H2O Act, which would create a USDA Rural Development grant program to help households on private wells, small community systems, and licensed childcare facilities test and treat their drinking water.

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Liquid Assets recently interviewed Zach Hamilton, founder of Aqueduct Research, about why “safe” tap water can still leave plenty of room for point-of-use filtration. Hamilton’s argument is that government testing only covers what regulators are required to monitor, while modern contaminants like PFAS, disinfection byproducts, bacteria, and cysts can vary by source water, distribution pipes, and even the plumbing inside a home. His phrase for it is simple: water is a soup, and every city gets a slightly different recipe. After living near Detroit during the Flint Water Crisis, Hamilton decided that a $300 lab test made less sense than buying a $300 reverse osmosis system that could remove a wide range of problems at the tap. That led to Aqueduct Research, where he is building durable residential RO systems with UV treatment and standard replacement media instead of proprietary filter cartridges. The big idea is decentralization: municipal systems still do essential work, but treating every gallon to perfection before it travels through miles of aging pipe is a large hill to die on. Watch the full episode here (38 min).

Tri-County Water published a practical look at why more Michigan and Indiana families are paying attention to what’s coming out of the tap. The article says it’s due to a familiar mix of reasons: PFAS headlines, aging infrastructure, hard water, seasonal taste and odor changes, lead service line projects, and the realization that a city water report does not always tell the full story inside a specific home. A utility can test the community system, but water still has to travel through local pipes, household plumbing, water heaters, old fixtures, private wells, and any existing treatment equipment before anyone drinks it (or washes a load of towels that comes out feeling like cardboard). Tri-County frames water testing as the first step before buying a softener, adding RO, replacing appliances, remodeling a kitchen, or chasing down taste and odor complaints.