Gut check

Rob Atema remembers the gut check in 2010. He tipped over a 5-gallon bucket and sat on it in the old shop, which was filled with equipment that was happily paid off but not running on jobsites. Rivertop Contracting had been working the tract home frenzy in North Carolina beyond its Asheville headquarters. Installation crews would go into new subdivisions and grade athe properties, then landscape them.

That business was big before 2009 when Atema says, “We really got steeped into the construction end of the business.” After a decade in business, the company had grown from Atema and partner/longtime friend, Brian Wierman, to about 40 people. And aside from tract homes, Rivertop was installing $40,000-plus landscapes on $1 million properties in gated communities.

“At this point, we were all in the field and we weren’t looking at the numbers or paying too much attention to the incoming call log,” Atema says. “We were working. We were planting trees.”

Then the grading contractors on new home construction sites stopped working. That was a clue – their work was done and the well was dry. But because Rivertop’s landscaping piece came toward the end of projects, the economic blow didn’t hit Atema until later. “We just kept on, then all of a sudden we were done with our work and there was no place to move our skid-steers. There was just nothing,” Atema says.

Atema had to lay off most of the staff. The team shrunk down to six employees, and that included Atema and Wierman. “The silver lining was that the company stayed intact because our debt load at the time was minimal,” Atema says.

But still, there was no work coming in.

Sitting on the bucket, Atema thought, “What am I going to do?” He and Wierman loved construction. They didn’t want to give up the installation business. But in 2010, after that moment of clarity that maintenance would stoke some new business, Rivertop made a strategic decision to focus on obtaining large commercial maintenance contracts.

“We started talking to our builder contacts and used relationships with HOAs and management companies to open some doors in maintenance,” Atema says.

Then Rivertop landed the Asheville parks and recreation contract. By 2012, the company was running five fulltime maintenance crews and taking on construction jobs, too. “We were signing high-dollar construction jobs left and right, and we got distracted (from the maintenance focus),” Atema says.

Another moment of clarity: The company needed a renewed maintenance focus.

So in 2013, the company hit $3.5 million and the director of business development, Kenny Jackson, came on board. “I was still the chief salesman,” Atema says, relating that Wierman ran the construction division (and still does). “I had to have, like, a 90-percent close rate to keep up with feeding the machine, so to speak.” He was booking any kind of job – construction, maintenance.

Fast-forward to 2014. Atema, Wierman and Jackson sit at a table together – a completely different scene than the 5-gallon bucket solo. It was time to plan how to play big. And maintenance, again, was the answer. Except this time, Rivertop would focus on securing national tenants and commercial office space clients.

In between all of this is a story about recalibrating a business, realizing a vision and cementing a valuable partnership. There’s a story about learning how to narrow down while expanding geographically. There’s a story about a tireless, over-achieving little guy that now plays in the big ring.

That’s the Rivertop story, and today the firm is $4.3 million in revenue with 75 employees, a fleet of 37 trucks and contracts in three states. If you add the reach of its strategic partner, that makes 225 employees and 130 trucks on the road.

“It’s a big deal to be able to sit at the bidding table across from a national company,” Atema says of a critical strategic partnership that has been key to propelling growth. “It is allowing us to be a regional player and, to use a boxing analogy, fight a weight class up. We are in the light weights but we are playing with the heavy weights.”

Here is the progression that took Rivertop from a mostly residential installation firm to a commercial maintenance contractor that still holds some construction work while competing for maintenance accounts like Wal-Mart.
 

Cutting off residential work.

Atema and the team wanted to go after strip malls and large single-tenant multiple-location contracts. That meant saying goodbye to residential maintenance completely in spring 2014. “We just didn’t renew their contracts, and we also let go some of our HOA clients,” Atema says. “We got really focused on that multiple-location model.”

Still, the company continued its construction division. But the maintenance goal was to service accounts like Target, Home Depot, O’Reilly’s Auto Parts, etc.
 

Drilling down and reaching out.

Going after multi-location clients required expanding the service area. “We drew a circle 100 miles out from Asheville, N.C., and said, ‘We are going to service that area,’” Atema says. All the while, Rivertop continued to do construction work for loyal clients.

“Our construction division is smaller than it once was, but we are still relevant,” Atema says, relating that the company runs seven installation crews and 11 maintenance crews.

After stretching the service area out beyond Asheville to capture more business during 2014, that fall the leadership regrouped and decided to go even wider. “We had to broaden our footprint and offer a bigger area to be attractive to, like, an Advanced Auto Parts,” Atema says.

“We can’t go to them and say, ‘We just do Asheville and Hickory,’ and expect them to be excited about that. So we developed a strategic partnership with another landscaping company based out of Charlotte, N.C.”

This expanded Rivertop’s ground into South Carolina and Virginia. “That allows us to compete in an arena with the Brickmans, US Lawns, Rupperts and others are playing,” Atema says.
 

Forming a strategic partnership.

The partnership began with Rivertop serving as a subcontractor for a larger firm based out of Charlotte a few years prior to 2014 when the relationship was officially formed. Then, Atema grew a stronger relationship with the owner. They’d call each other to compare notes on business issues – uniform policies, building a website and such.

Once Rivertop identified its ideal client in fall 2014 and decided to expand again, Atema visited the owner in Charlotte and pitched an idea. Rivertop had been serving as an extension of this company’s operation for an account with locations in its area. “What if we took that model and magnified it?” he suggested.

About six weeks later, after discussions including the directors of operations, sales and key managers, the companies entered in a mutual agreement. “We are working together for the common good for both companies on these particular relationships,” Atema says, specifically referring to the single-tenant, multiple-location maintenance contracts.

The agreement included identifying quality: “If I am selling Rivertop to a client with 100 branches, I need to have some assurance that what I’m selling them in Asheville, N.C., will look the same in Wilmington, S.C.,” Atema says, also speaking to consistency.

Other key factors included a uniform look, pricing and capacity. (See What makes a perfect partner? on pg. 54.)

Then there was the administration end. The owners agreed that the “contract prime” would manage communications with the client, and who serves as prime depends on who sold the account and where it is located.

The strategic partnership has more than doubled Rivertop’s capacity in terms of boots on the ground and fleet. Beyond that, the growth “reinforcements” are stoking employee morale. “When we pitched the concept to our field managers, there was huge excitement,” Atema says. “It helped our culture because everyone wants to do something bigger than just mowing grass or planting trees.”
 

Staying relevant at home.

While Rivertop is signing contracts with properties to maintain all over the Carolinas, the company still holds a strong foothold at home in Asheville, where it serves hospitals and retail properties, the city parks and recreation and other commercial accounts.

To accommodate growth, Rivertop completed a 6,000 square-foot facility on a 6-acre property up the road from its original location, which housed a 2,200 square-foot building and no offices, just a warehouse.

“I was scared to make this big move,” Atema admits of the facility. “Quite frankly, it scared me to make the commitment because I remember sitting on that bucket in an empty shop saying, ‘What am I going to do now?’”

But Atema, Wierman and the team have proved that stepping outside of one’s comfort zone is necessary to grow. “I’m excited about what’s to come with our strategic partnership and for our people, who entrust in us,” he says.