Each week the Green Bay Press-Gazette talks to business owners and leaders for its Monday conversation feature.
Today, Mike McPeake and Justin Rollin of Earth Development Inc. talk about the landscaping business and its focus on teaching customers how to care for their own landscape and gardens.
Instruction is included as part of landscaping projects and also available for a fee as a stand-alone service.
Rollin has been in the business since 1999 and recently brought on McPeake to focus on the landscaping and instruction. The business also offers fertilizer, weed control and snow removal services.
Q. What are the origins of this business?
A. Rollin: We started out lawn mowing in 1999, started landscaping in 2000 and landscaped heavily through 2006 or 2007 when the economy started turning. We started backing off and going more toward residential chemical application.
About 75 percent of our business is snow removal.
Q. Why has landscaping become a focus again?
A. Rollin: We feel the economy is changing, and it’s changing huge.
McPeake: We think there is a need for a different kind of landscaping company, one that is more about educating and teaching.
Q. Why is that education and customer-based approach important and what would you like to teach customers?
A. McPeake: It’s not about the dollar amount, it’s about getting the customer’s ideas and incorporating those ideas in landscaping that is affordable for them.
Within the process is doing the follow-up if they have problems with their plants or trees.
We do garden coaching. We have private pruning lessons we’ll do for our customers. We have a garden bed maintenance program we can put together for them to assist customers in correctly taking care of their landscaping … and we give them the confidence to do the work themselves so they can maintain their own landscaping.
It also helps them to know that when they need to turn to a professional they can call us and we’ll be there. We also make house calls for any landscaping, it doesn’t make a difference who put it in.
We think there’s a real niche there.
I’ve been in the business 25 years. I owned my own business and worked for a lot of other companies. It’s just hindsight … I believe educating the customer is the bottom line.
Q. Is there any trepidation with trying a different approach to the landscaping side of the business?
A. Rollin: We’re trying to be a little different than everyone else, and this is the way to go.
Going back into it now with the market changing, I want to be different than everyone else. If we go into it with this attitude that we’re there to help everybody, it will work out.
People get their landscaping done … and they have no idea what the plant is, how to take care of it, what to do with the plant. That’s where we’re here to educate them.
McPeake: We don’t really know where this is going to go … but we know we’re moving in the right direction and we know there is a need for it.
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