Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
Replies
A lot of variable here.
Unfortuately I think you may have little uptake at that price bracket given what some of the national franchises charge....
Drop spreaders have their place, as do rotary (wheeled) and rotary (hand) spreaders. Some products like long life coated fertilsers cannot be used in a drop spreader as it damages the slow release coating.
Very much depends on the size of area you are treating and what product you are using.
Never used a "drop spreader" but I'd guess they take much longer compared to a wheeled rotary that I always use. Where I have seenthem used, not been very successful with lines of burnt patches! The fertilzer "Evergreen" I use costs about £25 for 400 square metres. I'd guess your average lawn would be about 100 square metres so a tenner for fert at the most. With a rotary, its a 10 minute job... then you've travelling time. I'd say you should be looking at about £30 if you want to actually get the work.
use a wheeld brordcast spredder with a fert only then a backpack sprayer for any weed killer requierd, you will never get it right with a drop spreader
Forget a drop spreader, useless. We don't do a lot of lawn treatment and have had numerous rotary spreaders , guess you won't want to spend a lot one of the best budget spreaders we are still using is the Cobra around £85 online we bought ours through our dealer as they are difficult to assemble and wanted it put together which they did for £15.
All our work is on a fixed price monthly charge over 12 months and includes lawn treatments where requested, you will find it difficult to make money out of lawn treatment against the nationals , but we have taken substantial volumes of work off them by emphasising that we offer a higher quality service and as we are visiting weekly/fortnightly can supply a more focussed service to their lawn and deal with issues before they become more serious and costly to fix against the nationals who only visit every 3 months and rarely send the same operative therefore never get to know the lawn. If you can't make a decent margin forget it along with watering you will make a rod for your own back.
The way forward is to get your regular maintenance customers on a monthly fixed price over 12 months, it's not difficult most will be used to paying by direct debit monthly for gas and electricity and maybe insurance. Emphasise the convenience of a monthly Standing Order so that they know exactly how much their garden maintenance will cost each month with no bills to deal with. Gone off the subject a bit but it's the only way to make decent money out of lawn treatment.
The local lawn treatment to us starts from £15 per treatment and they seem very well reviewed. Some of the national franchises aren't that much more than that either so i'd guess a minimum price of £50 might be too high. Great if you can get it though.
I think that if you are trying to compete against the nationals, then you need to see what they do. From what I have seen, they typically spend no more than 10min per average size garden and use 1 handheld spreader worth of granular weed/feed. They never water it in, and the product is never specially selected for that particular lawn. They just have Spring, Summer and Autumn mixes.
Hence why they can offer circa£20 per visit. They have multiple clients in each area, and are doing 5-6 per hour, making £90-£100 per hour.
There's no future in a race to the bottom on price we all know where that ends. Michael will not have the economies of scale that the nationals have who are paying national minimum wage to their workers.
Our businesses are about averaging say £45 hr over a working week not earning minimum wage like the nationals employees. As said in my previous post he needs to sell a quality, focussed service where he is making a good margin and if the customer will not pay for that, walk away.
Another way of looking at this is Michael is providing this service to his existing customers he does not have to compete on price he will be providing a more considered almost bespoke service which commands a premium price .
A different business model able to supply full lawn care benefits to lawns he knows well .
I have had customers who like using the nationals for their lawn care treatment and just require the gardener to cut the grass .
Others who have cancelled their lawn care contract when its time to renew because they prefer a more thorough approach ,a bit more attention without having to upgrade to the annual gold package but you have to explain the maths , one example I charged £40 where the lawn company charged £22 but they got the gold standard service from me by default without having to sign up for an annual contract so it balanced out for them but for me not really an area where I could prosper .
Personally I always recommend the lawn companies and always consider it a diservice to myself being asked to do lawnncare from a handful of customers .although it's nice to take a pride in your work and in the gardens you work in if you can prosper .
Evening gents,
Thank you for everybody's response.
To clarify, I am not looking to compete with franchises across the country, that will never go down well. However, I do have a handful of customers, as they get to know me, becoming interested in lawn weed and feed, feed and all the rest. I have a good supplier (not sure if I can mention the name). I've been using their products myself for this season to trial - and thus far good success.
I am navigating the pricing etc - but I feel comfortable I can reasonably charge £50/per treatment, there will be an initial outlay for me, as bulk orders reduces cost by 1/3 - thus making it more profitable for me.
I read all the comments, thank you.
As said there is no need to compete with the nationals you are a different business model and you will no doubt go the extra mile .
£50 is purely a percentage of achieving the exacting overall results your customers will expect for this bespoke service .
Most likely it will take you longer initially until you get into your stride and assuming you will be providing full lawn care maintenance.
Have you worked out a maintenance schedule for each lawn , estimated time you may need to invest , layout on equipment ,treatments etc so you can manage your customers expectations ?
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next