On the Cutting Edge

After 37 years in business, K.C. Fisher, president of Tampa-based The Landcare Group, knows what it takes to be a success. “It’s all about having a passion for what you do,” says Fisher, whose commercial lawn maintenance company employs 40 people and brings in upwards of $2.5 million annually.

“I started out as small as you can, grew to three locations, but now operate out of one location at about the same level of sales that we had in 1992,” Fisher goes on to say. “I discovered that being big isn’t always what it is cracked up to be. And unless you have the right management systems in place, excessive growth can create headaches.”

Fisher says that most of his headaches are gone today. He absolutely enjoys going to work, despite the sketchy economy, thanks in large part to a family-like company culture and knowledge that his systems today are producing results.

INNOVATOR

A 1974 graduate of the University of South Florida with a degree in finance, Fisher admits to being a bit of an innovator. His company name suggests that. “I came up with the name after a marketing class at USF,” he explains. “To my knowledge, we were the first to coin the word Landcare, although we obviously haven’t been the last. Still, we have the copyright to the name in this state, and it has served us well for several decades.”

This entrepreneur talks about some of his other innovations over the last 30-plus years. “In 1984, I created a bidding/estimating system from scratch, employing a college senior (who four years later came to work for us as our Orlando branch manager) to do the legwork. He actually conducted a square-foot-based time study of every job function on every job. It took him six months to compile the data and come up with the production factors and corresponding ratios.”

Eight years ago Landcare turned green before it was popular to do so. “We purchased some industrial-zoned land and a tub grinder, and started to recycle all of our job debris,” Fisher explains. “The good stuff is ground twice, first to the proper size. Then we add powdered iron, a byproduct of the automobile industry, and water during the second grind. This completes the staining process, and the end product is a very pleasant brick-red mulch. We add soil and horse manure to the material we can’t use for mulch in order to make a potting soil.”

Other cutting edge strategies for Landcare include a fleet management program, benchmarking the company’s financials against the top landscape contractors in the country, and developing a proprietary Client Tool to facilitate communication with customers.

“Eight years ago we purchased a fleet management software program from a trucking company,” Fisher relates. “It tracks preventive maintenance schedules on all our equipment, from our two-cycle handheld blowers and trimmers to our mowers, trucks and trailers. The program alerts us when equipment needs an oil change, tires need to be rotated, and so forth. Admittedly, the program has increased our maintenance costs, but has also seriously reduced our downtime. Plus, it allows us to operate mowers and vehicles a few years longer than we normally would.”