Highly Profitable Year-Round Landscape and Snow Removal Services Business

About the Business:  This featured business is a well-established, highly profitable landscape maintenance company serving Denver and the surrounding area. The Business handles everything related to maintaining the exterior of their customers’ properties, from the landscape, to the parking lot, to clearing snow. They are proud to offer their clients the convenience of being a single source for all the services they need to keep their property looking great all year round.

The snow removal side of the business focuses on Commercial Sites, Small and Large Businesses, and Housing Developments.  The landscape services they provide include Lawn Care, Installation and Landscape Construction, Weed Control, Tree Spade, Irrigation and Sprinklers. Additionally the Business provides parking lot services that include paint, repair, asphalt and sealcoating.

Company Organization and Structure:  The Business was started in 1989, and is still owned and operated by the same owners. Both of the owners each have specific duties and change hats throughout the year due to the seasonal changes requiring different aspects of service.  One owner is in charge of maintenance in general, that includes services such as lawn mowing, sprinklers, fertilizing, weed control, and parking lot sweeping.  This owner has about 10 employees under him that are comprised of 9 employees that help with the maintenance and 1 employee that does irrigation work.  In this group of employees there are 3 supervisors that make sure the work gets done according to the specifications.  This allows the owner to run many of the operational aspects of the business and also spend time on a different business they own.

Some of the operational duties the owner performs include managing the lawn maintenance contracts, quoting new work, customer relationships, quality control checks, scheduling the maintenance crews, making sure the contracts are in place for both snow removal and landscape at each of the appropriate times of the year.

Meanwhile, the other owner handles the landscape construction side of the business where he bids jobs and deals directly with customers. Some of the work this owner does includes bidding for excavating, dirt prep work, asphalt work, patching, sealing and also parking lot striping. This owner has a right hand man that supervises a crew of about 6 contract employees.

Business Expansion/Growth:  The two owners are heavily involved in another business they own.  They are each spending far less than what we be considered a full-time job for the Landscaping & Maintenance Business so one obvious growth area would be to take advantage of the spare time and put more hours into the Business.  The owners have several suggestions for growth which they are willing to share with a prospective buyer.  There is the potential of bringing in a landscape architect. Snow removal is cherry-picked, but a new owner could certainly do a greater volume of snow removal as the need in the market exists.  The owners feel that parking lot sweeping could grow because they haven’t marketed it at all.  Full-scale commercial property maintenance contracts could be integrated into the business.  Also, holiday lighting for commercial and high-end residential is another area where the owners see the potential for growth.

Competition: There are several companies in the market but not very many have been in business since 1989.  Some names of the bigger companies that are players include Brightview, JPL, and Keesan to name a few, but this featured Business flies under the radar and focuses on capturing the right clients that are in the “sweet spot” of profit margins because they are full-service, year-round, large enough and more than capable to handle the bigger jobs, but small enough to give personal service.  Their clients would say they are “easy to work with.”

Training/Transition:  The owners are negotiable on the training included in the sale of the business.  Most likely a Buyer will want to put a consulting agreement in place to follow the training.  The owners are offering to finance a good portion of the sale, and they are also going to be staying on the premises operating their other business. These ingredients add up to offer a great opportunity for a new owner to transition successfully into the business.

The two owners understand that if it is one person that purchases the business, then one person will be replacing the two current owners.  They have several ideas to work around that hurdle.  A couple key employees could easily be promoted within the organization to compensate for changes.  Also, buyers should keep in mind that neither of the owners are spending a full-time job working on this featured Business.

Lease: The two owners own the building in which the Landscaping Business operates.  The building is also located on their on the site of their other business.  Although the details will need to be firmed up between Buyer and Seller, the Seller is willing to leasing part of the building and the storage for the equipment for approximately $5,000 per month ($60,000) per year.

Reason for the Sale:  The two owners own another business and have started a second location for that business and would like to focus exclusively on that business.