When Pacific Landscape Management began to outgrow its service area, the company looked to expand beyond Northwest Oregon, says Bob Grover, president of Pacific Landscape Management in Hillsboro, Ore. That expansion helped the business see a 34-percent increase in revenue from 2021 to 2022.
Pacific Landscape Management is No. 66 on the 2023 LM150 list of the top landscaping companies in the country. After providing landscape management services to commercial properties and homeowner associations in the Portland area since 2001, Grover says the company began running out of opportunities and feared their growth would slow down.
Pacific had customers asking when it would expand to Seattle, where many of them had additional properties. So Grover decided it was time to move into a new state. Pacific acquired Earthworks Landscape Services and the commercial landscape maintenance division of His Hands Lawncare in 2022. Those moves brought in four branches with a team of 150 new professionals to serve the Puget Sound region.
“There’s a significantly bigger opportunity to grow in Seattle,” Grover says. “We are really excited to bring what we’re doing in Portland to Seattle.”
Grover says he believed his company would be more successful by expanding through acquisition, instead of launching new branches there. Not only did it give them a larger customer base to grow from, it also seemed like the natural next step for the company to take, he adds.
Before the acquisitions, Pacific had about $36 million in revenue. The acquisitions added $12 million in revenue. Grover says Pacific will consider acquiring other businesses in the future.
The new branches ran their own systems until they could implement Pacific’s software, system and service offerings. They later rebranded as Pacific Landscape Management.
One aspect of the transition that Grover says he’s especially proud of is the partner system his team developed. Pacific paired existing account managers in Portland with ones in Seattle.
“That buddy system was tremendous as opposed to just going up there and giving them a book and putting them through a seminar on how to do things,” Grover says. “It creates a team spirit that’s helped us thrive.”
The company also held regular sessions during the transition to help the new team members learn processes. Grover says his team realized those classes could be beneficial company-wide, so they began offering weekly training for all team members.
“There are 52 modules that all of the account managers and field managers go through,” Grover says. “These weekly modules have been a great way to get our entire operations and account management team on the same page.”
The company also experienced 14 percent organic growth from 2021 to 2022 in its Portland-Ore.-based operations, Grover says.
“We don’t sell — we help people buy and make it easy for them,” he says. “We help people invest in their landscapes and work to help solve problems. Our focus is on providing a sustainable product.
