How has your business outlook and practices changed over time as your business grew thru the years. Did you expand, contract, outsource, end one business to start another? It is always great to see how every companies story is different.
As for our story...
As we now enter our 15th year of buying my parents business out (and having run it for the previous 10, and worked in it the 10 before that, we are at the point that I feel we are no longer in the growth phase (or maybe a better phrase is we don't want to be in the growth phase). We started this transition about 3 years ago where all new projects and upgrades were to make the job easier or more efficient. Sure we could keep growing but we are already at over 5 acres of indoor plant production, about 25% bigger than I can basically handle so in season we are pushing on fumes at the end.
So it has been a new kinda fun thing to see what we can do to solve pain points where we just pushed thru before because that is what we knew. Three years ago we got a new robotic transplanter that allowed us to operate much more efficiently and consistently and freed up some of our employees to work on other aspects that were not being adequately addressed because the planting took priority over everything else. 2 years ago was a was a warehouse expansion that should have been done 15 years ago which made everything easier from staging of plants for shipment to unloading all the semis of supplies and not having to move 10 pallets to get to the one we need. This current off season we have built an office (getting the business out of the house) and a break room with refrigerators and microwaves for up to 25 people at a time with heat and AC (vs some folding tables in a corner of the warehouse that had to be moved out of the way everyday). Another improvement is that every greenhouse and barn is connected, so no more walking outside to get from #11 to #16 etc. That is an improvement for employees but also now allows movement of plants even in sub freezing temps.
Already starting to dream up what the next improvement can be for 2026.
This will be our 38th year in business, we have always been a mobile business and in the beginning we were working every minute of everyday. We started out working about 30 fairs a year, as time progressed we culled it down to the 20 top fairs a year. In the past 3 years we have culled it down even more to the top 10 fairs. At first we were concerned about the drop of income, but we found out that not running all over the country gave us more time to concentrate on our business and devote more attention to top preforming fairs. We are actually making more money now with less travel and maybe a little less work.
As for our future we both turned 60 this year and are planning an exit/retirement phase and hoping our granddaughter will want to take the business over, after it is named after her.
