Systems and structures

William Gruccio and Michael D’Orazio started Vineland Landscaping four years ago, and have grown it into a $500,000 full-service company in a highly competitive market. The 28-year-olds have big goals, but don’t know the systems and structures they need to accomplish them.

Vineland’s goals are to increase efficiency and profitability, specifically getting net profit closer to 10 percent. The company has grown rapidly in five years – $700,000 in revenue in 2016, double what it posted in 2015 – but the duo struggles with cash flow and actually making profits.

Vineland operates out of a shop that Gruccio’s family owns, which eliminates significant overhead and the management team takes very little in salary. He wants to structure the company so it can be high-performing on paper, and in real life.

 “We’d grown pretty good, but still not making money. Artificially, we look like pretty much every other company, doing OK,” Gruccio says. “We want to actually be looking good.”

Consultants Bill Arman and Ed Laflamme love the connections Gruccio and D’Orazio have built – including with the Vineland mayor’s office – but are concerned that the town is too rural and too spread out to have enough business to sustain a million-dollar landscape company.

“Will is a networking genius. The guy is over the top,” Arman says. “He knows every person on Earth in a 20-mile radius.”

Their immediate focus for Vineland will be improving gross margins, safety and sales.      

“These guys are really smart, college-educated business guys; they just don’t know what they don’t know,” Laflamme says. “But they’re catching on real fast.”