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Fitting framework

This company controls its growth through infrastructure

After being in business only a few years, Mike Neese, CLP, decided it was time to light the afterburners. His company, Grayson South, located in Charlotte, North Carolina, had been growing slowly since it was founded in 1999. Five years later, the owner launched an aggressive growth campaign. He moved the company closer to his work, hired an office manager, and put in place a series of systems to both encourage and control growth.
The plan worked. By the end of 2005, Grayson South’s revenue had increased by 55 percent and the company looks for a repeat performance by the end of this year.

Company operations

Grayson South’s revenue is divided nearly equally between residential design/build and maintenance. The company has nine full-time employees and operates four crews, two for maintenance and two for installation projects.

Neese, who holds a finance degree from Appalachian State University, started his business after several years in the corporate world as a sales associate. Even though he had no formal training in horticulture, he was raised on a farm and had an affinity and knack for growing and maintaining landscapes. The former Eagle Scout started out small, with a truck, mower, and single employee. He joined PLANET’s legacy association, ALCA, a year later and began to lay the foundation for future growth.

Business model

“In 2004, I created a five-year plan that included developing an infrastructure to control anticipated growth,” says Neese. “Since the Charlotte area has plenty of work, I thought that reaching growth goals wouldn’t be too difficult. The difficult part would be to control growth and make sure it would be profitable.”

His plan included a business model — targeting residential customers and setting up a system of processes to help ensure appropriate cash flow and profit margins. As he points out, the plan also looked for ways to eliminate sources of frustration and aggravation, such as avoiding accounts that didn’t fit the business model, educating customers, and setting appropriate expectations upfront.

The ideal Grayson South maintenance customer signs a 12-month contract and automatically deposits the monthly maintenance fee into the company’s bank account. “We encourage customers to sign up for our automatic Visa/MasterCard pay program, or they have the option of simply direct depositing our fee,” Neese explains. “Either way, we know when the money is coming in. The program also reduces our risk and saves us the time and money associated with monthly billing. Further more, we find that many of our customers who don’t want to cut grass also don’t want the hassle of cutting monthly checks.”

To ensure a decent profit margin in the highly competitive residential maintenance market, the owner also added a few efficiencies. The two maintenance crews are completely standardized with the same trucks, mowers, and two-cycle equipment. Even the toolbox is placed in the identical location in each truck, and crews know exactly what needs to be done at every stop.

All maintenance is scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, leaving Thursday open as a makeup or special project day. Employees are cross-trained to work on both maintenance and installation crews.

Grayson South’s office manager plays a key role throughout, adds Neese. Since she has the first contact with a prospective customer, she weeds out projects or customers that don’t fit the company’s business model. She also handles receivable and payable accounts and works closely with vendors, among other responsibilities.

Two-way street

Neese says that a big part of his success is attributable to having a give-and-take attitude. He has high expectations of his employees. In return, they receive a relaxed work environment, flexible hours when work permits, and a three-day weekend when feasible. Employees, though, take a drug test, and Neese runs a motor vehicle check on them before they walk through the front door the first time. “I’m not unreasonable, just cautious,” he adds. “It doesn’t make any sense to hire and train individuals who could become a liability to your company.” The owner also gets his hands dirty in the field with crews when he can, and he learned Spanish to communicate effectively with his Hispanic employees and help train them.

Similarly, he gives customers exemplary service, but, in return, he expects them to understand that Mother Nature throws a few curve balls from time to time. He also expects them to be sympathetic to the busy-season regimen. “Instead of encouraging mulching during busy times in spring and fall, we try to schedule most of our mulching in January and February,” Neese relates. “That way, our crews don’t do double time when time is at a premium. This also keeps us in front of our customers year-round and keeps our employees working through the winter months.”

The owner expects his company’s next five-year plan to be less aggressive than the current one. As he emphasizes, success is not all about growth. It’s also about having profitable, controlled growth and encouraging all parties — customers, employees, and owners — to walk the same two-way street.

 

Sew up loyalty

Former clothing designer says small, flexible companies have an edge

Featured Member

Artscape, Inc.
Royal Oak, Michigan
Caprice Aerts, president

Caprice Aerts doesn’t have a huge interior plantscaping company. In her words, it’s just “comfortable.” Yet, her customer list and reputation have been growing steadily for the past 15 years. During that time, Artscape, Inc., located in Royal Oak, Michigan, has expanded from having one customer in 1991 to today servicing more than 175 high-end offices, medical centers, and other commercial properties in and around Detroit.

Aerts grew her young business by building good relationships and taking the attitude that there’s no such thing as “no” when it comes to serving customers. She has also taken her time. “After being in business 15 years, we’ve learned to be more selective about the properties we take on,” says Aerts. “Being picky has allowed us to control our growth, and it has contributed to our reputation as a quality company.”

Late bloomer

Before starting her company, Aerts had spent several years in the retail and wholesale clothing business, at one time actually marketing her own line of leather jackets called “Caprice.” Indeed, the path from college to selling and installing interior plants was an indirect one.

After graduating with a degree in fine arts in the late 1970s, Aerts began working for a leather company in San Francisco. She designed jackets there for a few years before returning to her home state of Michigan, where she took a job at a garment leather shop, and later opened her own leather store.

“Being an entrepreneur was always in my blood,” Aerts recalls. “It didn’t take me long working for someone else to realize that I would be happier running my own business. I opened a retail clothing store and sold custom-made leather jackets to area sports stars and other personalities. Soon, I was marketing my own line and operating a wholesale clothing business.”

The business, though, became increasingly competitive at about the same time the owner was showing signs of burnout from all of the traveling associated with producing and marketing her clothing line. She closed up shop and sold her inventory, and was soon approached by an interior plantscaping company to be its sales director.

“I loved plants and grew up around a mother and sister who had green thumbs, but I wasn’t a horticulturist by any means,” Aerts recalls. “The company wanted me for my sales experience. I accepted the position and learned more about plants while working on the job.” The entrepreneurial bug bit her again, though, and in 1991, she started Artscape with one developer client.

Straightforward approach

The owner describes her company’s success by using terms such as “consistency,” “strong ethics,” “appreciation,” and “flexiblity,” all of which relate to the customer. “I truly appreciate all of my customers,” says Aerts. “We stay in contact with each other, and I make it a point to routinely call on them. If there’s one complaint I repeatedly hear about other suppliers, it’s their lack of attentiveness. Customers will say, ‘I never see the tech,’ or ‘The owner never calls.’ After years of being in retail and working with customers, I’ve learned the importance of building and keeping relationships.”

Aerts is not bashful about sharing her knowledge and experience with her employees or telling them how important it is to be consistent, timely, and ethical in how they conduct business. “An 8-inch plant is an 8-inch plant, not a 6-inch plant,” says Aerts, “and being on time means showing up when you promised you would.”

It may be a cliché, but this owner still thinks the customer is always right. And, if not always right, there at least should be a way to work out problems or differences, she adds. “My husband and I recently had a bad experience at a tennis shop where we have been long-time customers,” she relates. “To make a long story short, we wanted to exchange an item for something else. We missed the exchange deadline by only a few days, but neither the owner nor manager would budge a bit. In fact, they were rude. We were willing to accept something less, but they were virtually intransigent, and they lost a customer because of their position.”

She continues, “My customers tell me I’m flexible and willing to work with them. I guess that’s one advantage of being a relatively small company. I believe smaller com panies also have a better chance to be more profitable than their larger counterparts, just from lack of overhead.”

Defining moments

Artscape has had several defining moments over the years. Aerts points to two of them. “Becoming a member of PLANET’s legacy association, ALCA, was huge,” she emphasizes. “When I first started in business, I networked with several members and asked them a lot of questions. I still have a good network of friends.

“Two years ago, I won a day with a PLANET Trailblazer. Ironically, I was on the committee that originally came up with the Trailblazer program. Terry Anderson, CLP, from BRICKMAN was my trailblazer, and he since has helped me immensely with a few growing pains and restructuring issues. I cannot say enough about how important networking and having access to a professional like Terry have been to my company’s success.”

Not to say her business today is without its challenges. Michigan’s economy is among the most difficult in the country, and rising fuel and freight costs pose ongoing threats to profitability. “Most of my customers have been agreeable to a small fuel surcharge,” says Aerts, “but even then, a surcharge only partially covers rising costs. We just have to learn to be more efficient.”

Another ongoing issue is keeping employees satisfied. Artscape pays its employees top dollar, but as Aerts emphasizes, money isn’t everything. She quickly draws a comparison between retaining employees and retaining customers. The common bond, she says, is communication — it’s being open and letting customers and employees know how important they are to your company. “In fact, I tell my employees outright that I don’t work for myself,” she says. “Instead, I work for them, and I work for our customers.”

Aerts has learned from experience that if you sew up the loyalty from both groups, success will follow.