Got A Light?

Green Earth Landscaping, Hackensack, N.J., is not the type of company to keep pushing an add-on service if it isn’t working out. Mark Moore, president of the company, says Green Earth recently sold its residential maintenance division because it wasn’t performing the way it had initially hoped. "It was cheaper to sell it off and focus on other things that were working," he explains.

Among those "working" services is Green Earth’s night-lighting division.

Moore says that Green Earth began to offer lighting as an add-on service eight years ago, spurred by the frustration of watching other companies show up to add lighting to landscape jobs that Green Earth had completed. "Sometimes customers would request it and at that time we didn’t do it," he says. "So we’d see electricians and sometimes even other landscape contractors come in to install lighting in our landscape designs in a way we didn’t like. We wanted to shut the door on that and increase our sales, so we started offering the service gradually, and now it’s part of our regular make-up."

From the outset, Moore was confident that his company had made a prudent decision with the bright idea. "It was always an easy upsell upon completing either the hardscape or planting work," he says, adding that many of his customers would never even get to see their $30,000 landscaping jobs if not for having it lit by Green Earth. "Most of our clients are executives that work in New York City and they’re commuting an hour back and forth every day. By the time they get home, it’s dark out and they can’t enjoy it."

Beginning a lighting service was relatively uncomplicated, Moore says, adding that the first step to getting it off the ground was a marketing push. "Once we decided we wanted to add it, we did some promotional pieces and added them to our regular handouts to customers," he explains. "Next, we actually automatically began to do a landscape lighting design for our plant jobs, offering proposals to do it while meeting with clients during regular landscape design meetings."

Rendering a lighting design with every job is now standard procedure, even if the client doesn’t ask for it, he says. "We price the lighting while pricing the rest of the job and 50 percent of the time we’ll end up selling it."

In addition to being an easy sell, Moore says that the overhead for beginning a night lighting service was negligible. One incurred overhead investment was the development of a $1,200 demonstration kit that Green Earth uses to show current customers what lighting could add to their properties. "Often, we’ll explain to clients on larger jobs that we do free demonstrations. We bring out the lighting and set it up without telling them how long we’ll leave it there," he explains. "We’ll usually leave it there for three or four days and then send someone out to pick it up without telling the customer. Usually our phone will ring before we can even call them back for follow-up."

Moore says he estimates that Green Earth has a 90 percent success rate at selling jobs this way and that the cost of putting together the demonstration kit was paid for after two jobs.

In fact, the overhead of adding lighting to Green Earth’s arsenal of services practically begins and ends with marketing. "There’s really no special equipment needed to provide the service," he points out. "Typically, we use a lot of the same tools we’d use for the work we’re doing already on these sites, such as installing plants."

With regard to lighting supplies, such as wiring and fixtures, Moore says that because lighting jobs are done on a made-to-order basis, there’s no reason to keep a warehouse stocked with equipment when you can order as you go. "We do keep a certain amount of stock around at this point – usually, no more than $1,000 worth – just because we know what to expect people will ask for, and it’s good to have replacement supplies available when you get a last minute call from a customer."

Moore admits that the only real challenge of adding lighting to Green Earth’s service involved technical training for employees. "Teaching the staff to do installations and troubleshoot was probably the hardest part," he says. "Primarily, because you’re dealing with things like volt meters. It’s not like you can just plug things into the ground and they’ll be all right."

Though initially unprepared to train employees himself, Moore says that many employees trained through various short courses at Rutgers University. "We also did in-house training with some of our suppliers," he says. "We had a lot of support from dealers and field representatives who constantly solve our little problems and help us with things we were doing wrong."

Moore says that once the core group of managers and foremen understood the process, the training obstacles began to diminish. The only thing left to worry about was turning a profit.

"It varies from year to year, but I’d say we probably make between $150,000 and $200,000 annually with lighting," Moore asserts, adding that the service generally brings in profits 5 to 10 percent greater than its other services. "Lighting, if it’s done with the installation work, is generally at a 25- to 30-percent profit margin," Moore says. "If it’s done separately sometimes it’s a little bit less – 15 to 20 percent."

Moore says the reason for this is that lighting is easier to do in correlation with jobs that are already being done. Low overhead and the fact that lighting installation can be quick without being excessively labor intensive naturally helps make combination jobs more profitable than singular lighting jobs. "But only about 10 percent of the jobs we do are just lighting," he clarifies. "Ninety percent of the work is an add-on to something we’re already doing."

Moore says Green Earth continues to experience steady growth that’s been relatively easy to keep up with. "Labor has never really been an issue because we’re mainly H-2B," he says, adding that steady management also helps to keep everything running smoothly.

But because Moore considers night lighting a growth industry, he has decided to invest further in that aspect of his business by developing a 1½-acre design display center that will showcase Green Earth’s plant materials lit in numerous ways. "It will almost be like an arboretum," he says. "Clients will be able to visit in the evenings and we can show them different lighting effects on different plants."

Moore says that Green Earth would certainly survive without its add-on lighting service but why would it want to? As Moore points out: "There’s very little overhead and the business is there – just staring us in the face."

The author is assistant editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at wnepper@lawnandlandscape.com. Mark Moore can be reached at www.greenearthlandscaping.com or 201/488-0111.