Eden Landscaping and Snow Removal

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45 people on staff now. Riley Marvin, president of ALPHA, started out like many others in the industry by mowing lawns in high school. While attending Iowa State, Marvin would travel back home during the week to mow lawns on Wednesdays when he didn’t have classes. Between his sophomore and junior years of college, he began doing some residential projects in central Iowa. Marvin says he always knew he wanted to have his own company at some point. “My sophomore year of college, I decided I need to just do this now, and not have a job,” Marvin says. “That’s when I switched out of engineering. I switched to finance, and I graduated with a finance degree.” Marvin says he doesn’t have an ideal company size. He defines success for his company by continued growth, happy clients and a happy workforce. ALPHA’s current annual revenue is between $10-11 million this year. “You always think, ‘Oh, if I just get there, it’s all going to be good,’ but then you get there and you’re like, ‘Oh, this isn’t all that,’” Marvin says. “We’re just going to try to continue to grow for the sake of our employees and provide growth opportunities for everyone.” Keys To Success Marvin credits his company’s success to their specialization. The company is dedicated to being a turn-key landscape contractor for commercial new construction projects. Photo: ALPHA Landscapes Their main customer base is general contractors, developers, municipalities and civil contractors. The majority of ALPHA’s client base is recurring. Marvin says they are very responsive to their customers as they seek to build long-term relationships with everyone. “We’re specialized, and we are set up more like a construction company, so our clients are a little more comfortable dealing with how we operate versus hiring a maybe a landscaper that doesn’t typically operate as a construction subcontractor,” Marvin says. Marvin says that playing around with residential work tripped him up early on. “I think it’s something that trips a lot of people up, is you can’t be everything to everyone,” Marvin says. “We do one type of work for one type of customer and being siloed like that has allowed us to really embrace that type of work and set ourselves up to do that work well, do it efficiently, and price competitively.” He says being specialized also allows them to tune their hiring, equipment and training to their specific type of work. “If there’s anything I recommend to a company starting out is pick one thing you want to be good at and do and go all in on that,” Marvin says. The company’s services include commercial landscape construction, irrigation installation, seeding and erosion control and snow and ice management. Marvin says they’re very selective about what services they add on as a company. “We subcontracted out over a million dollars in irrigation work last year so we did bring our irrigation crew in-house this year,” he says. Photo: ALPHA Landscapes Three years ago, they started doing erosion work, quit and now they’ve started doing it again. “We’re looking at acquiring a small erosion control company as well, but a lot of that is seeding type work, which we have to complete as part of our contracts for new installs as well, so there’s a little bit of synergy there,” Marvin says. Marvin says he’s also benefited from getting more involved with NALP. He says they’ve utilized the OSHA 10-Hour Safety Course , the Landscape Management Certification Program in Spanish and attended several of the events. “A year ago was our first year going to the ELEVATE event,” Marvin says. “I really enjoyed that, and we’ll be going every year from now on.” Dealing with Challenges “For me, there are always challenges,” Marvin says. “I graduated college in December ‘19, so my first full-time here was 2020, and that brought us some challenges.” Marvin says they’ve had hiring challenges in 2021-22, but they’ve turned a corner there. However, this year, while they’re on track with a similar revenue, Marvin says they’ve had to sell themselves more to earn it. Photo: ALPHA Landscapes Marvin says last year, they grew by 65%. Some of this was fueled by getting to work all the way through December due to it being unseasonably warm. “This year, we’re going to be at about the same pace, but we’re going to be growing into our shoes a little more and more stable and profitable at it,” Marvin says. He is also trying to decide where they will grow next as they’ve achieved the majority of market share in their type of work in Des Moines. Being a young owner, Marvin has also had to work to earn the respect of clients and employees older than him. To help with this, he hired industry veteran Sohn Wallace as his general superintendent in the fall of 2019. Wallace runs all of their field operations and Marvin says it’s made things easier for managing employees older than himself. “He didn’t have an issue with it, and so that’s been very helpful, especially dealing with in the commercial construction business,” Marvin says. “You deal with some clients that don’t necessarily like the younger generation, and it’s been a nice buffer for helping out with that and with employees.” Recruiting and Retention Marvin says the majority of their hires have come through referrals. Additionally, ALPHA recruits through Indeed, and Marvin says he wants to start bringing in an intern every year as Iowa State has a good horticulture and landscape architecture program. They also have a nearby community college that has a two-year landscape construction program. Marvin says they’ve also used H-2B for the past two years, but this year, their workers came a month late. Photo: ALPHA Landscapes The company retains their employees by striving to be above average in everything they do. “We just try and pay right, treat our guys right, give them consistent hours, not make people work every weekend and give them the right tools and equipment their job,” Marvin says. ALPHA offers 3% employer match retirement, PTO, attendance, referral and performance bonuses, as well as life, health, vision and dental insurance. “I think to offer a good benefits package is really not that hard,” Marvin says. “I would say what we offer is above average.” Marvin says he’s not just concerned about growing his top line. “We can continue to grow the skills of our team members or just grow the quality of working here,” Marvin says. “We try and continue to provide training opportunities and continue to improve our assets that guys are using to build our projects every day.” Click  here...

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