Symbiot Group Growing

A lot of industry observers are keeping an eye on the Symbiot Business Group and its unique attempt to create a national network of landscape contractors that would enable local companies to compete for regional or national accounts.

Symbiot’s strategy includes the development of two primary groups of service providers: the Symbiot Landscape Network and the Symbiot Landscape Affiliate Network. The first group, which Symbiot refers to as Partners, consists of 37 large landscape firms in major metropolitan areas, and those companies have the first right to pursue contracts that Symbiot secures in those areas. The affiliate program currently includes 106 companies, which are generally smaller companies located outside of major markets or, in some cases, in the same area as the Partners. The affiliates will be able to pursue contracts that Partners don’t secure, or they may be relied upon to handle the work in their area for some deals.

An additional strategy for Symbiot is to offer its member companies national buying power by pooling the purchasing resources of all of the companies involved. Symbiot refers to this as its P3Program (Purchase Power Partner). At this point, a number of industry suppliers have signed up to participate in the program. They include:

• Acordia
• Ariens
• CLIP
• FertileEarth
• Gravely
• Husqvarna
• PowerHouse Equipment
• PowerHouse Capital
• Stens
• Weathermatic
• Wilson-Oyler Group

“The P3 Program links thousands of property service organizations with an elite group of equipment manufacturers, distributors, suppliers and other business partners in the service industry,” explained Drew St. John, Symbiot’s vice president. “This strategic sales and marketing alliance capitalizes on the acceptance of only premier providers of service and quality in its affiliated industries. The P3 concept was developed to bring world-class products and services to the Symbiot Network Partners and Affiliates with discount volume pricing that is generally only reserved for the largest nationwide providers.