Business breakthrough

Brian Yaffa started B&L Landscaping, Oak Park, Mich., more than 30 years ago with a couple of push mowers and a truck. Now, the company pulls in $6 million a year and employs more than 100 people in season, with divisions for landscape construction, maintenance and snow and ice management. But when the economy hit Detroit and its suburbs hard, and B&L’s margins on landscape installations took a hit, too.

To adjust, the company shifted its focus to more commercial and sustainable work – installing live roofs, rain gardens and bioswales – and reevaluated its relationships with nurseries, growers and other suppliers to save money and enter niche markets.

“We try to use the word ‘team.’ We’re all in this thing together,” says Dick  Angell, director of landscape construction. “People are starting to understand that. If we all want to stay in business, and move forward and have positive results, we need to work together.”

B&L Director of Landscape Construction Dick Angell, right, and Vice President Larry Yaffa look for quality – in plants and people – from their suppliers. Photo: Dwight CendrowskiWhat they look for
Angell and Yaffa say they look for flexibility when establishing a partnership with a plant material supplier. Margins grow ever smaller, and any wiggle room the company can provide on pricing and payment schedules is appreciated – especially when B&L’s own customers are slow to pay.

“We don’t’ consider ourselves a bank,” Angell says. “They understand that we really don’t like to pay them until we get paid.”

Also important is the quality of the plant materials delivered, and the people caring for them, Angell adds.

“It’s a living, viable product. If it gets mistreated … we have to warrant it and it can be pretty roughed up,” he says.

And he’s not interested in someone just selling him plants. He wants someone who understands their end use, and how to work around problems. If the nursery doesn’t have the exact specimen he needs, he’ll ask what they have that’s close enough to fulfill the design.

“Architects want to see material,” says Larry Yaffa, vice president. “We walk with our customers and go over how they care for it, where it’s come from, its background. A good nursery … helps us on the backside with warranty situations, so people are receiving quality product. If they’re just pushing material through the yard … it could be a detriment to us.”

On hold
During the construction boom, many landscaping companies couldn’t keep enough plants on hand. Now, with building slowing down, having all those trees and shrubs on hand is a liability. So, B&L reached out to its suppliers and asked if they could change the system. Instead of having a nursery drop-ship plant material or asking B&L to keep it in its own holding yard, the company asked if suppliers would hold materials until B&L is ready to install them. 

“We really work with them on changing around their philosophies,” says Yaffa. “They’re looking at their operation as more of a holding situation than they were before. It’s a new thought process for us all. Before, we had it in a holding yard for ourselves. Now, everybody’s looking to the wholesalers and the growers to more of that for us. Obviously, that makes for good relationships.”

B&L works with about 15 growers and nurseries and last year spent about $500,000 on plant materials. Angell says the company started asking about changing logistics a few years ago, when freight prices spiked. And sitting down with suppliers has proven beneficial – Yaffa says the money saved by having Christensen’s Plant Center, Plymouth, Mich., hold plant material has given him room in his profit margins to be more competitive on bidding certain jobs.

“For the most part, we wouldn’t be who we are without them. That’s one of the biggest things that’s very important – the relationships with all the vendors we have … landscaping or parts – are key elements of our business,” Yaffa says. “To be able to provide the quality product we’re looking for in the timeliness that we need it, that’s built on relationships. Timing, payment – it’s a total package.”

B&L’s 2010 strategy is to increase sales from referrals and find niche businesses where it can stand out. To that end, the company has built a strong business in rain gardens, wetlands remediation and other sustainable services for large commercial clients. Yaffa says the specialized skills required in that niche mean the competition there isn’t as fierce as, say, commercial maintenance, and more business comes from referrals.

“We’re trying to find any avenues that we can get an insight into and not battle against 20 other 30 (other companies),” Angell says. “We know that price is important. We are really trying to sell value. After last year, a lot of clients are starting to see that. They went with low price, and they got what they paid for.”

Custom operations
One of the main reasons B&L has been able to focus on sustainable services is Jim Ashley, who owns Reed Perennial Farms with his wife, Cheryl Reed. The two companies have worked together for more than a decade, but the Fowlerville, Mich.-based grower has been producing custom-ordered wetland plants for B&L rain garden installations for four years.

B&L just finished building eight such gardens for the city of Auburn Hills, and all the plant material was custom grown. Reed also supplied the materials for four boulevard islands in Pleasant Ridge – projects the company might not have undertaken if it didn’t have a reliable material source.

“It’s just a phone call and he gets things going,” Angell says of working with Ashley. “He’ll set stuff aside. That’s just the relationship we’ve got. He’s right on time planting. The stuff he’s growing he knows he can sell. I knew I had somebody backing me up who could do it.”

And, Angell says, all he had to do was ask. “I asked if he’d be willing to do it. He said, ‘You bet.’ If you don’t ask the question, you’ll never get an answer,” he says. 

The author is managing editor of Lawn & Landscape. He can be reached at cbowen@gie.net.