Landscape Management, October 2010

BUSINESS PLANNER 2011 CASE STUDIES ON GROWTH Maintenance is where its at Shifting focus toward maintenance over construction brought growth to Earthworks BY LINDSEY GETZ when things started going downhill with the economy Earthworks a Lillian TX based company decided to be proactive You cant fi ght the environment says Chris Lee president You have to look at how you can turn what most people see as a negative into something positive Lee says the more he looked at the situation his company was in the more opportunity he began to see He realized it was a chance to grow the maintenance end of his business Normally we wouldnt have the resources to grow our maintenance base he says But suddenly we had that opportunity At the time the business was doing about 60 maintenance work and 30 installation rehab But when the economy turned a lot of the extras outside of maintenance were starting to dry up There was no new construction in the area So Lee made the transition to growing the maintenance division in place of installations Today hes closer to 70 maintenance and 20 installation rehab As people have started spending more this year that maintenance base began increasing dramatically Lee believes hes in a great place Were set up to not only maintain our business through the recession but to explode once its over he says At press time the company was tracking for a little more than 20 growth Were on target for bringing in 127 million if everything continues as planned Lee adds Thats actually a little ahead of where we thought wed be LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET OCTOBER 2010 108 GROWTH PROFILE Earthworks Lillian TX 2010 Growth 20 Chris Lee Besides the ability to adapt by growing the maintenance side the company was also successful this year because it embraced its clients and their situation They were in fi nancial diffi culty and their budgets were tighter he says of his all commercial clientele While some landscape companies got resentful and mad that their clients were bidding work we tried to empathize with our clients situation We got out there and talked to them about how we could help them through these tough times so they werent taking our jobs to bid We started looking at ways we could re negotiate contracts with clients who were really struggling We embraced their situation and said Lets work together Along with that many of Lees clients were doing things like sprinkler repairs or fl ower beds in house to try and cut some costs We decided that instead of being mad wed look at it as the new game he explains Its the way things are now So we decided if they were going to do it in house we could help them do it right We viewed it as another opportunity to solidify our base by creating good will So we offered nocharge irrigation classes where we actually taught them what to do and bought them lunch Ironically the more education we gave the more our clients realized it wasnt so simple theres a lot of complexity to irrigation systems and they wanted beautiful and colorful beds So we actually found we got a lot of jobs back that way Lee says he really believes the recession has ultimately made his business better Were truly a better company today than we were at the end of 2008 because it was easy to make money then he says Now you really have to have a focus and a plan The situation has forced us to adapt and its pushed us to get better We will be a better company for the future because of what weve been through today LM getz is a freelancer with experience covering landscaping