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Sucess Magazine, December 2004
By Mark Murley
In seven years, a Sanford, FL based "green industry” company has grown from petunia to sequoia-sized profits. Of all adjectives that can be flung in Rick Girard’s direction, "tenacious” may apply best. The success of Girard Environmental Services can be laid squarely at the feet of the company’s chief executive officer by virtue of his persistence in dusting himself off after several business upsets.
Consider: Between 1995 and 1998, Girard, who is now 35, faced an array of personal and business related obstacles ranging from bankruptcy, being terminated and three failed partnerships, the last ending in a failed legal attack by a vindictive former partner. Any one of which could have permanently torpedoed a less stubborn entrepreneur.
The Romans observed: Fortes fortuna iuvat (Fortune favors the brave). Fortune also favors those with supportive kin, such as Girard’s brother Randy Girard, 31, who is the company’s president and chief operating officer and has kept an equal hand on the company steering wheel since 1998. His father Leo Girard, 58, who joined the company three years ago as executive vice president, also commands attention.
Green Industry Companies – Popping Up Like Weeds
Landscaping in the sunshine state is like no other because of an environment that is utterly relentless to say the least. A cursory glance through the Sanford BellSouth Yellow Pages reveals five full pages of local landscaping and lawn maintenance firms. These businesses range in size from numerous one-man mowing operations to large, nationally ranked "green industry” companies, which are equipped to handle every aspect of design, irrigation, landscaping and maintenance.
GES, humbly located under the train track bridge at Airport Road and State Road 46, most certainly ranks amongst the top 100 green industry companies in the nation – no small feat considering that the company didn’t even get rolling until late 1998. Still, despite hundreds of local landscapers both small and large, Rick Girard doesn’t worry too much about competition, especially considering that GES has a customer base that numbers well over a thousand and is growing exponentially by the week.
"We do have competition, but then again, we don’t because of our diversity,” says Rick Girard, who handles that accounting and administrative side of the business. "There is no other company in the Central Florida market that does what we do. Each of our departments has its own separate competition that it deals with on a daily basis.
For example, our residential lawn and shrub care department competes with one particular segment of the industry. But our construction division competes with an entirely different segment of the industry. So, if you look at the company as a whole, we don’t really have any competition.”
Quality First
Although companies of every shape and size typically trumpet their own attention to quality and performance, the true test is to ask their customers if they’re just full of hot air or truly do walk the talk. Terry Pyle, who sits on Heathrow’s board of directors, recommended GES to the board two years ago.
"What first caught my eye was that their trucks are clean and neat,” says Pyle, who also serves as chairperson for the infrastructure committee of the upscale Seminole County community. "We’d been through four different landscaping contractors in 15 years and just never got what we looking for, so when the residents took over the association from the developer in December 2002, we interviewed landscapers for eight months before settling on Girard.
We have more than two thousand homes and 37 miles of roadways here in Heathrow and our goal was to find a contractor who could not only handle the job, but also help restore the luster to our community.”
"Energizer Bunnies” to the Post-Charley Rescue
Pyle says GES’s shining hour arrived with the recent trio of hurricanes that bulldozed their way through Central Florida, particularly Charley. "I’ve never seen anyone perform as well as Girard did during the hurricane time,” says Pyle.
"We called them the morning after Charlie, and they were here within the hour. All they needed were little pink costumes and they would’ve been the Energizer bunnies. The rain is coming down, the wind is blowing and those guys were already out there, going at it. I have received more accolades by email letter and people hugging me at the Heathrow Country Club saying, I don’t know how you do what you do. I tell them: ‘Talk to Girard’.
Jim Roman, vice president and general manager of Oviedo Marketplace also has good things to say about GES’s response to the damage caused by Charley, Frances and Jeanne. "As a result of having these guys on our team, we were able to open up our property after each hurricane, with minimal loss of business. They were able to at least open up emergency entrances and exists to allow for both emergency vehicle and employee access to the property, quite simply they did an excellent job for us.”
Rick Girard says that dealing with the aftermath of the recent storms was a challenge – one that inspired mixed feelings. "It feels strange, because the hurricanes have been catastrophically bad for so many people, but I can’t say they’ve been bad for us - here we are making money at the despair of others. What a time to be in landscaping business, I don’t think we’ll ever experience anything like this again in our lifetime: three storms of this magnitude within 45 days of each other, it’s just an incredible experience.”
Brother Randy, who oversees the company’s day-to-day operations, says that depressed construction sales are beginning to rebound in a big way. "These hurricanes have impacted us quite a bit. During the past two months we have had to go back and re-install literally thousands of trees instead of continuing with our regular construction schedule which usually generates about $800,000 per month in revenue. This means that we have more than $2.5 million in new construction work alone that’s ready to be done right now.” He added, "This doesn’t count all of the renovation work that just keeps stacking up.”
Above and Beyond the Call
Randy and Rick Girard may have traded their work boots for a pair of matching Hummer H-2’s but when the occasion calls for it, the brothers are prepared to get down and dirty. "After Charley blew through Heathrow, I was the first on site with a chainsaw,” laughs Randy Girard. "I got over there about six in the morning the day after to assess the damage. The crews weren’t showing up fast enough, so I jumped on a chainsaw. I haven’t forgotten where I came from!”
The brothers have also jumped on something else that’s even more unusual: partnering with small landscaping companies. GES has also recently developed a partnership program with many of the small local companies in an effort to build there residential business. "We're going to these guys and saying ‘Hey we don’t want to be your competition, we want to help you so you can help us,” says Rick Girard.
"These guys hold the key to our targeted customer base and we have so much to offer them that they just can’t get anywhere else.” The partnership works by one company referring customers to the other for the service it can best provide.
"For example, we want to provide indoor pest control, lawn and shrub care and irrigation repair services, but we don’t want to mow their grass, mulch their yards, plant their flowers, or do the little landscaping jobs and we get asked daily ‘Who can you recommend?’, so were going to create our network of companies to recommend.”
Today and Tomorrow
In the six years since its inception, GES’s growth continues like kudzu on a North Carolina hillside. Sales have rocketed from $1.7 million in 1999 to a projected $16 million this year. The company currently boasts a fleet of over 60 vehicles and employs nearly 180 individuals. The company has grown to include four divisions: design, construction, management and residential services.
GES has also recently opened its first residential branch. "This pretty exciting for us. We separated out our residential division about two years ago and have been fine tuning it ever since. The branch here in Sanford is the first of six branches that we’ll open in Central Florida over the next five years,” says Rick Girard.
"We have no interest right now in expanding to any other Florida markets, we just want to dominate the Central Florida market,” he added. Randy Girard agrees. "A solid fifty percent of our business happens in the county, with the rest spread throughout Orange, Osceola, Lake and Volusia. I think that Seminole County is a wonderful place to live and work.”
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