A Question of Growth

By K. Schipper

HANOVER, Pa. – Ryan Jacobs is finding that hardscapes bring business success … and concerns.

Clilck photo to enlargeAs with many others in the industry, Jacobs began his landscaping career before he finished high school. Experience with two landscape contractors, a stint as a tender for a mason and many, many side jobs led him to launch his own company, Ryan’s Landscaping, in 2007.

The hardscapes – mainly patios and retaining walls with a few water features – allowed him to keep busier longer in the year .

Still in his 20s, the hardscapes have also provided much of the impetus for a growth spurt this year. Now, he’s weighing the advisability of adding a second crew.

The big question: How to maintain the high quality of his work?

LEARNING CURVE

Jacobs began working in the landscape business at 17, and his first employer taught him a lot of things he probably would rather not know.
 
“He wasn’t too good of a guy,” Jacobs explains. “He’d lay out everything and then go off and do his own thing and I’d be there completing the job.”

One homeowner was impressed enough to ask Jacobs if he’d like to finish the job after firing the contractor, but Jacobs – then 18 – felt he didn’t have the experience, or the transportation, to take on the project himself.

“I probably should have gotten into it then,” he adds. “That was when the market was really good.”

Instead, he continued to pick up experience, working for a while with a friend who was a mason, hiring on with another landscaping contractor, and doing other landscape work on the side while spending winters employed in a warehouse.

Click photo to enlargeThen, six years ago, he made his move.

“It started to get nice out and spring rolled around and I decided to pursue this thing,” Jacobs says. “I put an ad in a small paper that goes out around here, and that’s how I got started.”

Initially, he found himself doing a lot of design-and-install of softscape jobs. However, clients kept asking for more, and so Ryan’s Landscaping moved into doing a few hardscape jobs.

“At first, we weren’t the best at them,” he admits. “I learned as we went along; I did research and took classes where I got hands-on training. After that, I really started advertising them more.”

Jacobs says it’s been the last two years where the hardscapes really started taking off – carrying the season with them.

“Last year we were pretty much able to work clear through the year, almost to the end of January,” he says. “We had about a month or so off before we started up again, and it seems like that’s what the demand is for. We’re doing a lot of design-and-install of hardscapes, and not so much the landscapes.”

DUAL TRACK

In a typical year, Jacobs says he starts doing design work for clients in March. He adds there are some distinct differences between those wanting hardscapes and those wanting softscapes.