Growing at iLandscape

Lawn & Landscape visited the iLandscape show Feb. 25 to 27 and talked to Brandon Hanson, owner of Hanson Landscape about 2015.

What's your service mix?

We're about 60% maintenance, 20% snow, 20% construction.

How is 2015 going so far?

Great. Not as good as last year - we had more snow. But business is good. I’ve been growing about 30 percent every year for about six years now.

We do a lot of lawn maintenance. It’s all commercial. We don’t do residential so we have contracts that are three-year contracts. We have some backlog in construction and then all of our snow.

What are your big challenges right now?

Finding good employees. We’ve hired some guys and we’ve started going to some of the local places in Aurora. Our shop is in Aurora so we’ve been trying some places around there. We’re going and putting up flyers and stuff at the supermarkets and laundromats and stuff like that. Most of our guys come to us word of mouth – somebody knows somebody.

What new trends are you seeing?

We’re starting to get a lot more involved in rooftop plantings. We’re starting to pick up a lot more work in Chicago. That’s actually one of my reasons for coming down here is to see if I could find somebody who is doing a lot more of the plantings and things for rooftops and I did. I found somebody.