Working out West

Annie Bamberger

owner, Anniebam Landscape Solutions, Portland, Ore.

The Portland market, where Bamberger has worked for decades, has been seeing an increase in environmental regulations — specifically centered around the use of gas-powered equipment. While Anniebam has been using battery-powered equipment for 11 years now, Bamberger says she’s still not a proponent of the bans.

“In Portland, it’s only banned in the inner city,” she says. “But there are advocacy groups that are trying to get it banned statewide. I’ve been working with the advocacy groups that are pushing for gas-powered bans and emphasizing that I’m disappointed there are not good recycling programs in place. It drives me nuts.”

Bamberger says that without having proper recycling centers for the batteries, and the machines themselves, the bans will only create new environmental problems.

“I have multiple pieces of equipment that I can’t get worked on or recycled. We’ve asked the vendors where we should take the products to be recycled and there is nothing in place,” she says. “Some municipalities supposedly have battery recycling programs, but they still don’t take the body of the machine. In rural places, it’s even worse because they don’t even have recycling for plastic, let alone batteries. So, with those statewide bans, I’m 100% against them until the recycling component is part of it.”

Despite the battery battle, Bamberger says she has bigger issues on her plate, as Anniebam experienced its worst year in company history in 2023.

“Usually, we are around half a million dollars in revenue, but last year was only $250,000,”she says. “That’s because I got rid of my installation crew.”

Without the installation crew, the company is down to three employees including Bamberger, who adds she’s back to subcontracting out her installs while keeping the design portion — something she’s done in the past.

“I’ve seen a cycle where after three years or so the head person on the install crew feels like they can be a little more brazen and make decisions that are not aligned with the systems in place or they think they can just go start their own company and do better,” she says. “Though getting rid of the install crew was kind of a work-life balance decision, too.

“I had a life experience where I lost a dear friend tragically, and it made me realize I don’t want to work so hard and I want to have a better work-life balance,” Bamberger adds.

Bamberger admits that it took a tough conversation with the last lead installer to push her into this decision, and she doesn’t regret it. Despite the difficulties, the landscape design and fine-gardening company is projected to rake in closer to $350,000 in revenue this year.

“My approach is that we are a boutique experience,” she says. “We aren’t pumping out projects. We give the client a bigger value than another company may give them, and we charge appropriately for them. We aren’t the cheapest ones in the market but at the same time, we are a referral-only business… people seek me out because of what they’ve heard from their relatives, neighbors, coworkers — they say to go work with her.”

Bill Bumgardner

general manager/owner, Bumgardners Landscape Management, Medford, Ore.

He won’t belabor the point — Bumgardner says finding employees is the number one challenge of working in landscaping today.

Nestled in southern Oregon about 45 minutes away from the California border, Bumgardner says his company’s home base is the last major town before you head into the Golden State. The company offers comprehensive landscape management services for commercial and residential clients alike, though it focuses on residential. The company focuses on landscape maintenance but also offers enhancement, irrigation and lighting work, plus a fraction of the business is managing snow and ice.

Bumgardners Landscape Management has 23 full-time employees with six seasonal workers, but Bumgardner says the business is in the same boat as everyone else — finding new employees is a struggle.

He’s turned to H-2B as the solution, which he views as an essential part of running his company. He petitions for six workers and has received them the last few years. Bumgardner says this last year was great for H-2B, and they’ve been able to even get the same workers back over the last several summers.

“That helps keep us afloat; we really need them,” he says. “It’s just like everyone else: We’re challenged with finding good workers that fit into our culture, that show up. Our market is fairly small down here, so there’s only a few other major landscape companies that we compete with, so that makes it more competitive.”

Bumgardner says this is one area of the industry’s that’s stabilized since the pandemic.

“About three years ago? Oh man,” he says. “It was horrible. We didn’t get some of our people until halfway through the season.”

He says the struggle is in making blue-collar work “cool again,” though Bumgardner has combatted it with increasing wages over the last 12 months to be even more competitive with those in the area. He uses a consultant who helped him check what benefits and pay others in the area were offering.

The information from his competitors is online and publicly available, though it’s a matter of spending the time to dig deep in the research. Determining pay is also made easier by H-2B’s prevailing wage policy, and Bumgardner or anyone using H-2B is not allowed to pay American workers less than they pay the H-2B workers.

Bumgardner says this is all a slow process, not a silver bullet, but it’s helped them also be more selective in who they bring aboard.

“Oregon’s fairly pricey,” he says. “The labor wages are just really high, but we’ve had to do it to maintain good folks and acquire good folks.”

Bumgardner has noticed quite the financial squeeze around operational costs. That’s anything from fuel to materials. While it’s a frustrating endeavor trying to navigate those increased prices, he sees a silver lining.

“I guess the positive from that is it just makes you focus on investing in your equipment, really thinking about strategizing, optimizing our routes, negotiating with some of our suppliers for better pricing, payment plans for some of the materials,” Bumgardner says.

Another significant thing that’s different from last year is customer expectations, though it all comes from that same spot — things getting more expensive. “They’re kind of feeling the squeeze, too,” he says. “It’s their money, so they could definitely critique our work more. It makes us focus more on quality. That’s the positive.”

Bumgardner likened the last five years to a client gold rush. “It was like a telethon at our place. Nobody was concerned with the pricing,” he says. Now, customers are calling to find ways to keep prices down. Bumgardner says it’s been a challenge finding ways to offer more value to his clients. That’s come down to customer relationships, which can be challenging when they are commercial accounts that are managed from afar.

“We’ve been proactive in communicating with them what needs done and why so we don’t surprise them on the bill,” he says. “(Inflation) makes us work on our relationships better. The clients are trying to save money just as much as we are.”

Brooks & Andrea Zimmermann

president & CEO/CFO, Belmire Premier Landscape Solutions, Loveland, Colo.

When the husband-and-wife team purchased Belmire in April of 2023, it was not only the company’s 53-year history that enticed them, but also the tenure and loyalty of Belmire’s longstanding staff that made them want to jump into the green industry.

“We were looking for a business to purchase and partner on,” Andrea explains. “We found this business and saw it as a diamond in the rough… we saw that it needed a little love, but we’re putting that TLC in. We knew it could be something great for everybody.”

Brooks adds that they’ve been excited about the opportunity since day one.

“Even with being green to the industry, we’ve been able to come in with the help of the experienced staff and implement things and bring the business up to date,” he says. “We’re growing at a rapid pace and we’re really excited.”

The Zimmermanns and their team of 70 employees garnered $8 million in revenue in 2023. 2024 will be even better as Belmire is projecting 134% growth this year.

“We’ve doubled our business from when we took it on already,” Andrea says. “This year, we should be hitting our projections and next year will be more about steady growth, focusing on margins and dialing in certain areas.”

Brooks says they were mindful to not come in to change a whole lot at once. They were eager to get the employees on board with their vision for the company.

“We weren’t trying to be a bull in the China shop,” he explains. “We came in, found out what they did really well, where we can put our two cents in in certain areas and have just been patient with it. I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished over this past year.”

The Zimmermanns say the biggest — and most effective changes — started by improving the company’s culture.

“We’ve implemented incentive programs, and we’ve made people feel proud to work at Belmire,” Andrea says. “That is something that we really strived to do. We want everybody to come to work, enjoy what they do and take pride in what they do.”

The company has implemented a monthly, performance-based incentive program. Belmire allocates funds and it is up to the crew leader on how to disburse it amongst their crew. The program is based on several things including refueling at night, reporting safety hazards and injuries, efficiencies and more.

Brooks adds the renewed focus on employee appreciation has gone a long way and has certainly attributed to the company’s success in 2024.

“Implementing the incentives has really lit a fire under the guys,” he says. “It moved the needle, and the guys really appreciate it. There’s also a higher level of accountability with it and that’s been a big thing helping our growth. Giving the guys their flowers really does go a long way.

“We’re just trying to create that family atmosphere,” Brooks adds. “We walked into a special group of people. They’ve accepted us and we’ve accepted them like family.”

But even with such an experienced staff, hiring and labor struggles still pop up. Being new to the industry, Brooks says they rely on their team to make the right calls.

“I feel like we’ve had a little bit of a merry-go-round out in the field, in terms of just finding the right guys for the right opportunities,” he says. “We’ve been getting feedback from those key employees in the field that I trust and respect.”

Chase O’Shea

president, Chase Lawn & Landscape, Tulsa, Okla.

If the past is to be any indicator, 2024 should be a banner year for Christmas light sales for Chase Lawn & Landscape. O’Shea says that’s due in large part to the presidential election.

“In 2020 and in 2016, Christmas light sales have been extremely high,” he says. “People wanted to do all red lights or all blue lights. Neighbors were almost passive-aggressively competing with each other to see who had more red lights versus blue lights. That’s something that we’re counting on again. It only happens in election years — it didn’t happen any other time.”

Still, even after the election, O’Shea says customers will want bright, cheerful Christmas displays as they will need something to celebrate after such a contentious time.

He adds the business tries to prepare for anything during election years, but there’s such a high level of uncertainty.

“The industry is ever-changing. But I think this being an election year, with a lot of the unknowns, whether you’re on the Democrat or Republican side, it’s pretty scary,” O’Shea says. “In certain ways we budget differently. Oklahoma is a very conservative state. Last time, every single county went red in Oklahoma.”

Regardless, O’Shea is optimistic that Chase Lawn & Landscape will grow in 2024. Last year, they reported $2 million in revenue, and he expects to be past $2.5 million this year.

“Our goal is to be a $10 million company by 2030,” he says. “We have some great opportunities coming down the pipeline... it’s not an impossible task by any means.”

One of the hardest hurdles facing Chase Lawn & Landscape is customers not only spending less but taking longer to commit.

“People have been incredibly unrealistic with price points,” O’Shea says. “We’ve had some really bad leads and some unrealistic leads. Our volume was higher last year than it’s been this year. Our average ticket price was $10,000 but this year it’s lower. It’s taking people three to four weeks to even make a decision, whereas last year, people got back to us within 10 days at max. I find that interesting.”

Something that’s helped sell customers on Chase Lawn & Landscape faster is the company’s prioritization of social media.

“We’re really putting a lot of time and effort into our social media,” O’Shea says. “It’s a slow game, but I really recommend getting into that so you can cultivate your audience and your brand. Give them videos about the process of a project and give them videos about the cost of a project.

“In 2023, we signed a $160,000 project on the spot because of our social media,” he adds. “The lady asked if we had a portfolio of projects, and I pulled my phone out and showed her our social media feed.”

A pain point for O’Shea has been increased lowball competition in the Tulsa market.

“We have a lot of companies that come and go,” he says. “Maybe a year or so ago, they had 10 to 12 trucks on the road but they’re not going to be profitable. They’re just the cheapest guys in town. Not to be judgmental, but if you look at their operation from the outside looking in, the lack of uniforms and lack of professionalism leaves them looking like a very rag-tag operation. We’re looking to create a partnership with someone instead. We only look for reoccurring clients.”

Mario Hernandez

president, Royal Landscaping, Phoenix, Ariz.

Mario Hernandez says his company’s definitely hit a growth spurt.

Now sporting 96 employees and a revenue that’s projected to surpass $6 million this year, he cites a renewed hiring process as the reason his company’s been able to find the necessary labor to grow. Since Lawn & Landscape recently interviewed Hernandez for a story that appeared in an issue over the summer, he’s already hired four more account managers and is interviewing for another spot.

Finding new employees is a tall task anywhere, but it’s not lost on Hernandez that especially in the hot Phoenix sun, finding employees who want to work outside can be a challenge.

Hernandez cites team-building events, paid continuing education opportunities, safety meetings and robust insurance that covers 75% of their health and dental costs as reasons they’ve been able to dial up more hires. “Of course, we’re working on employee retention stuff,” he adds. “We also promote within. Anything that we have right now leadership-wise, we’ve promoted from within. To this day, we haven’t hired (management spots) from outside.”

Hernandez says over six years of operating, they’ve instilled a culture of being unafraid to train your replacement.

“We’re preparing for the future,” he says.

Hernandez says they task potential new hires with a pretty strict questionnaire of things they’re looking for in that job. “It eliminates a lot of noise,” Hernandez says. He says sometimes, for instance, they’ll see employees living on the west side of Phoenix — they need to report to work on the east side of the city’s metro area.

“If you’re coming in to interview and you’re living on the west side of Phoenix, I want you to know the yard is here,” he says. “Do you have reliable transportation?

“We put out there everything that we offer,” he says. “Is that going to work for you? It really prepares us to get someone ready in the door.”

Hernandez says he’s able to find employees largely through word of mouth. “Happy people will invite other happy people to work,” Hernandez says. “If you just focus on the employees you have, they’ll bring other people.”

Royal Landscaping focuses on its employees by putting a spotlight on their achievements. If someone earns their spray license, Hernandez says the team really celebrates it with them. They’ll take them to Top Golf or Fat Cats, a nearby bowling alley and arcade. They’ll also announce it in their group chat to see others get excited about the achievement, too.

Plus, if they get a certification, Hernandez lines up a 1-on-1 meeting with that employee so they can go over their career goals. He says it helps show the employee that you’re invested in them if you can help them find their one-year, five-year and even life-long career goals.

“If you just listen to your people, they’ll tell you where they want to go, what they want to do, how much they want to make. It’s up to you,” he says.

Not all’s perfect out in the desert sun. Hernandez has noticed new employees are decreasingly interested in health insurance benefits and are more focused on the money up front. He admits he’s lost some good employees to competitors who offer more in starting wages. Hernandez believes illustrating their career growth is most possible at Royal Landscaping will help him keep employees. Everything has an end, and he thinks at some point, competitors will stop offering wage increases and employees will notice they could make more by sticking with Hernandez. Not all will stay: He’s lost a few employees this year to competitors.

He’s not sure what’s behind that movement, though he believes it’s cost of living and inflation driving employee urgency to find more money now.

“I understand that,” he says, “but I guess that’s probably been the hardest thing for us is sticking to our road map.”

Even despite his stay-the-course mentality, Hernandez says he has raised his wages, too. He automatically handed his employees a dollar raise this year, too. He acknowledges competition isn’t just in the industry but beyond it. Everyone’s feeling it at the gas pump or the grocery store, so he says it’s a landscaping business owner’s responsibility to ensure fair pricing and expectations for clients and employees alike.

“As competition, we need to not beat each other on price. We focus so much on our customers and our managers that we forget about our people,” he says. “Us as leaders, we need to make sure the market is right and that customers have realistic expectations about what we’re doing.”

Jeff Kunkel

president & CEO, GreenStar Landscape Management, Carmichael, Calif.

Doing business in California means GreenStar needs to stay up to date on all the policies and regulations that are ever-changing to keep its commercial clients compliant.

“It’s a dynamic market,” Kunkel says. “California is known for a lot of environmental policies and in our industry, there’s a lot of focus on drought regulation and water restriction, sustainability practices, laws around pesticides and labor — there’s a lot of that to stay ahead of.”

This year, Kunkel says the big focus has been around the demand for professional water management.

“It’s not just making sure the sprinklers don’t leak or are using too much water, but the professional management of the system,’ he explains. “Our customers are looking for more water-efficient designs and water-saving initiatives like turf conversion or permeable paving.”

With legislation changing constantly, Kunkel says effective education and communication are of the utmost importance.

“When we find out about a regulation like that, we get the background on it, try to highlight the main points they need to be concerned with and make a presentation to the customer. This way they can make an intelligent, educated decision on how they’re going to manage their property moving forward,” he says.

GreenStar seems to be doing a great job of it: The company earned over $5 million in revenue in 2023 and is projected to do about $8 million this year. Additionally, not one of their commercial clients has been found noncompliant.

“Some towns, cities and water districts are much stricter than others,” Kunkel says. “They’ve created teams and whole departments who are out and enforcing the regulations in some cases. In general, it’s been a pretty good process. We haven’t had any customers get fined or penalized because of water use or not following the guidelines. We’ve been able to intervene and help them navigate the regulations.”

With this being an election year, Kunkel says he’s increasingly curious about what the results will mean for current and pending regulations across the state.

“One way or another, it’s going to affect us depending on who is elected,” he says. “The policies in California around water use, equipment, labor and all of those things will shift depending on who is elected and what their concerns are. I think it will start at the top. The presidential election will follow along through legislature and our California government, too.”

Yet Greenstar is more focused on growth than anything else.

“We did an acquisition at the end of 2023,” Kunkel says. “When we finished it, we said to ourselves, ‘That was great. We should do more of those.’ Through the entire year, we’ve done really well with all of that business — we’ve retained it all.”

Kunkel says that was because of the company’s strategy to not incorporate many changes post-sale.

“We made a conscious decision to not make changes that were going to disrupt the employee or customer,” he says. “It was very successful.”

He adds that he’d love to make similar acquisitions moving forward.

“As long as we can find acquisitions that’d fall into that category of not having to make big changes to have it work, then we’re very interested in doing that in the future,” he says.

Justin Berg

president, Purple Care, Fort Worth, Texas

There’s one glaring thing about the industry that stands out to Berg.

“Our margins have never been this low — ever,” says Berg, the president at Purple Care, which focuses on high-end landscape install and larger maintenance accounts.

The company employs 45 people and projects $7 million in revenue this year. “We’re not the biggest, but we’re established enough,” Berg says, adding that the company’s focus on design/build and high-end accounts has helped Purple Care grow. “When we started off moons ago, somebody called for one yard of mulch and we went right over there,” he adds. Now, the company’s more selective with the clients it brings on.

That hasn’t helped with the profit margin, which Berg says has dipped for everyone in the industry. “What I’ve noticed with myself, and I’m really friendly about my competition in business, is that our margins have plummeted,” he says. Berg directly attributes that to rapidly escalating expenses on everything they buy.

“Nothing’s the same cost as it was two years ago,” he says. “Not even close.”

At first, Berg says the industry adopted an understanding approach to rising costs. COVID-19 seemed to spike costs for everyone and logically, Berg says he followed the rationale. But he believes everyone figured out that they could get away with another cost increase. When costs rose 30% and nobody grumbled, everyone did it again.

But Berg says folks are fed up. When the solution to plummeting margins has traditionally been to increase prices on the customer, he believes there’s more resistance to that now. He’s seeing what he calls “customer bounce,” where they’ve reached a breaking point in what they’re willing to pay for landscaping services.

Berg says this is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it’s frustrating that the industry has reached this point. On the other hand, now they know what the reasonable bounce rate might be for clients. He says there will always be customers who leave for a cheaper price, but Berg trains his sales team to focus on value, not on cost. When someone points out that Purple Care costs only a bit more than a competitor, Berg says he’s told those clients, “Oh, fantastic. Now I wonder if we underbid it.”

There are other companies in the area who are trying to acquire clients as fast as possible, but Berg says that’s not his team’s mission. He also adds that he uses high-quality products and keeps his trucks brand new, so he’s still aiming to solve his margin problem by preaching quality over quantity.

“I want to be known in my market (as), if you want the job done right, the finest products, you want these guys,” he says. “It’s going to cost you a little more, but those are your guys.”

Yes, Berg’s raised his wages, but he says it’s not enough to help his employees. He’s 51 years old and remembers when graduating college with a $40,000 job lined up was a good gig; now, he’s not sure it would pay for their basic needs.

He estimates he’s increased wages roughly 30% across the board since the pandemic first started. “That’s a fairly large increase,” he points out. Plus, when accounting for labor burden, for every dollar in cost that goes up, Berg says companies need to raise their price by three more dollars on the customers.

“I need to pay these guys a livable wage just so they can have a decent life,” Berg says. “It’s not lavish by any means, but at least they’re living.”

While it’s been a painstaking process, Berg says he’s become a better businessman as a result of these tight margins. They’re scrutinizing each purchase that affects their overhead and Berg, who says he’s a loyal customer to those who return that loyalty, is pushing back on vendors who he thinks are overcharging. He hadn’t even looked at some of those vendor accounts in nearly a decade.

“When your margins drop like they have, you really have to do a deep dive and start looking at everything,” he says. “Rather than (complain) about the margins, I’m happy it happened. I’m leaner and meaner than I ever have been.”