Chain of demand

One of the greatest frustrations for lawn and landscape companies comes when a product is not in stock or arrives late. This can lead to conflict with the vendor, says Mike Sisti, a Weed Man franchise operator in the Philadelphia area and who once worked on the supplier side of the green industry.

“The customer doesn’t want to know that a product is out of stock – and the customer is the lawn and landscape company’s livelihood,” Sisti says. “What vendors need to know is that if a company says they need a product now, well, they probably do.

“To the vendor, the product is going in a warehouse, but to a company, it’s going on someone’s lawn. They have to serve customers within a finite window.”

On the other hand, he says, lawn and landscape companies need to better educate themselves on the distribution chain – how a bag of fertilizer goes from the manufacturer to the warehouse and finally, to the store.

“The landscaper says, ‘It’s April 2, we need to hit these dandelions and go,’” Sisti says. “They don’t realize there’s a lot that happens before the product reaches the store.”

If vendors and lawn and landscape companies better understood each other’s needs, Sisti says, such conflict could be minimized. “They’d learn a lot,” he says.

This is one of three stories that ran in Lawn & Landscape's Growing Green e-newsletter. To continue reading about Mike Sisti:

Mike Sisti's passion guides him through the industry

Budding entrepreneurs: Mike Sisti teaches students the skills needed to run their own business.