We all know business, at least at the point of sale, has gotten pretty impersonal. Even at the grocery store, you can avoid other people altogether. Just pop in your earbuds and use the self-checkout line. The name of the game here is efficiency. Retailers and service companies are betting that most customers prefer speed and convenience at the cost of human contact and oversight.
An age-old lesson in business: It pays to zig when your competitor zags. Some people still value trust and reliability, especially when it comes to work done on their homes.
Pool
Sure, you can get a robot to clean your pool. But when it starts to leak, it sure is nice to call on someone who knows the pool in question.
That’s the kind of transaction Ross Gresham is betting on. When you call Gresham Pool Services, you’re getting Ross himself. It’s a one-man operation by design. Ross is targeting the customer who is fed up with getting a different technician every time something breaks down.
Ross Gresham, Owner of Gresham Pool Services. Almost 30 years into servicing Acadiana’s swimming pools, when you call Gresham Pool Services you get Ross Gresham: Ross intentionally keeps the business a one-man-band
Ross started working on pools almost three decades ago, as a side job while he was a student at UL. After graduating in 2005 with a degree in industrial technology, he built a career at Lafayette Consolidated Government. But pool work never let go of him. In 2025, he left local government to launch Gresham Pool Services full time.
Today Ross has a book of 25 weekly maintenance clients and another 20 who call him for repairs. He’s not chasing rapid growth. He’s chasing an underground leak-detection niche most of Acadiana can’t find locally. “It’s me coming to your house,” he says. “Not a different employee every week.”
Fabric
Retail, of course, has changed dramatically in the information age. Again, online stores are betting that folks don’t really need to touch and feel something before they buy it. That might make sense if you’re door-dashing paper towels, but if you’re picking out fabrics to glow up your living room — you might want to see what it looks like in real life.
For about the last 40 years, folks in Lafayette have done that at the Interior Fabric Shoppe, owned by Jack Emling.
Jack Emling, Owner of The Interior Fabric Shoppe. If you’ve decorated the inside of your house in Lafayette any time in the last 40 years you’ve probably been by the store and gotten Jack and his in-house designer staff’s opinion
Jack didn’t set out to run a fabric business. In the early 1980s, he and his then-wife ran a small furniture and gift store, and noticed Lafayette didn’t have a proper in-stock fabric shop — somewhere you could see and feel the material before you bought it. That gap became The Interior Fabric Shoppe, which opened in 1986. It’s since grown into a full-service interior design resource — custom draperies, bedding, motorized window treatments you can run from your phone.
Jack buys fabric direct from textile mills, which keeps prices competitive and the shop stocked deep. On top of the online retail revolution, the business has survived hurricanes, a fire, and a few decades of shifting buying habits.
Christiaan Mader hosts Out to Lunch Acadiana at Gravy in downtown Lafayette
Conclusion? It turns out, the human touch still holds up pretty well against the algorithm. More than that, it’s not hard to imagine that dealing with a real-live person is going to remain in demand, at least for a little while longer.
Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Gravy in downtown Lafayette. Photos by Astor Morgan.
Ross Gresham, Jack Emling, Out to Lunch at Gravy in downtown Lafayette
