Richard Ogawa
CEO and Owner, Gardenland Power Equipment
CEO and Co-Founder, Towa Industries, Campbell, Calif.
1. How did you get into the industry?
My father was a landscaper. I grew up in the landscaping industry, and then eventually my dad opened up his own outdoor power equipment (OPE) dealership. Then I grew up in that OPE dealership side of the business all throughout high school. Then I graduated, got my college degree and swore I’d never get back into this industry again. And sure enough, here I am 25 years later back in the industry.
2. What motivated you to co-found Towa Industries, a company that primarily creates universal charging solutions for battery-powered equipment?
As we were growing and expanding Gardenland Power Equipment, we found a big need for charging infrastructure. Because in California — especially here in Northern California — a lot of the Silicon Valley tech companies, all of those guys were pushing our commercial landscapers to go 100-percent battery. They didn’t want any gas products on their campuses. We had to deal with this very early on … 10 or 12 years ago. At that time, the battery products just weren’t there or commercial quality. That’s really what drove us to start Towa. One of the things that we wanted to solve with Towa was the charging capability. It’s one thing if you have a handful of batteries that you need to charge. It’s another when all of a sudden you have 100 to 200 batteries on a site that you need to charge overnight.
3. How are landscape companies there in California handling this change?
It’s unique. We were mandated in 2024, they passed legislation that said any (gas-powered landscape equipment) manufactured after Jan. 1, 2024, would no longer be able to be sold in California. There have been some hiccups; apparently there’s some EPA language that still needs to be approved. What that’s done is it’s kind of put our whole California industry in a tailspin because you have a lot of manufacturers, and even a lot of independent dealers, that are holding off on the transition. A lot of the larger landscape companies have made the transition, or at least a commitment to doing a certain percentage of their fleet. Overall, I think in general the market was kind of waiting for this date to come and seeing where it’s going to go.
4. You mentioned the larger landscape companies, but what about the smaller ones?
The typical cost of capital to switch from gas to battery is anywhere from two to five times more. It’s a significant capital increase. Not to mention that once you purchase the equipment, you’ve got to charge it, and a lot of these guys don’t own their properties. A lot of these one- or two-truck guys rent or lease their properties, and there’s no way that they can afford to upgrade the power panel, or sometimes the power is not even available for them to go to a full conversion. I think that has a significant impact on these smaller landscape companies.
5. What is your goal for the future of Towa?
Three years ago, no one talked about charging infrastructure. It never even came up. Now, everyone’s talking about it. Like how to maximize charging, how to maximize your circuit and not blow it. These are the transitional challenges when you’re going from gas to battery. Towa in Japanese means ‘universal’ and ‘long-lasting.’ Our whole goal is to give consumers a cost-effective way to transition by giving them solutions that are modular and universal so that you can use it and mix it with other brands of products.
