What’s your greatest strength as a CEO?   Sales?     Marketing?     Operations?   Whatever you do well, know that it might become your Achilles’ heel. As owners, we tend to invest in areas where we know we’re weak. We know we have limited resources, so we spend what we have on backstopping the places where we’re most vulnerable.    This tendency leads many founders to under-invest in areas where they have natural strength. Two of the most common functions are sales and marketing. Most owners are decent salespeople, so they figure they can compensate for a weakness in generating … Read more

Aspire Software, a ServiceTitan company and leading software provider for commercial landscaping businesses, today announced that it has entered into definitive agreements to acquire Go iLawn, an online property measurement tool, and LandOne Software, a cloud-based digital takeoff and design tool. “The addition of Go iLawn and LandOne will help meet Aspire’s goal of providing end-to-end services and solutions to the landscaping industry,” said Mark Tipton, CEO of Aspire Software. “By adding online tools for property measurement and design, we’re one step closer to that goal. Our plans to integrate both solutions with Aspire’s business management software will give landscapers yet another reason to switch to … Read more

Sentinel Capital Partners has acquired  Controlled Products, a market-leading manufacturer and distributor of premium synthetic turf products for landscape, sports, commercial, and specialty applications. Controlled products was acquired from Clearview Capital Fund III (Fund III), an affiliate of Clearview Capital. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, Controlled Products develops and distributes a variety of premium synthetic turf solutions through a network of dealers and customers across an international network and to its company-owned and franchised Purchase Green® stores. Controlled Products serves a diverse group of residential, commercial, and field customers with leading name brands including GrassTex™, … Read more

Odyssey Landscaping, Inc., based in Lodi, California,  has transitioned to employee ownership by becoming a 100% employee-owned company through the sale of stock to a newly created Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Odyssey was founded in 1982 in California by Martin Gates and initially focused on landscape installation. The Company has since expanded to include landscape design, construction, maintenance, and erosion control services. The Company primarily provides landscape construction and maintenance services, as well as erosion and concrete services. The Company has approximately 140 employees. “We created the ESOP to reward our team that has worked so hard to make … Read more

The pace of industry consolidation in the landscape services industry is hard to evaluate. Private equity and similar investors have “found” the landscape services sector and are searching for good candidates for acquisition. Here is a chart that illustrates the pace of landscape industry consolidation: Investors are attracted to landscape services for several reasons. The most important include the high level of recurring revenues, a high level of fragmentation within the industry and landscape industry’s character as an “essential service”, which has been clearly illustrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is clear that the only reason there have not been … Read more