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Views from Across the Pond
Monday, Oct. 27, 2010, 5 p.m. EDT
Pond Business Expansion - A Leap of Faith
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Blog post and photos by Trevor Cole
In 2003, my wife Jeannie and I brought home two babies: a daughter from China and a new, 5,000-square-foot water garden store. Both babies were a labor of love and a huge leap of faith for us. Adopting a daughter speaks for itself. It’s the birth of our pond business that I want to talk about.
Jeannie and I started dabbling in the pond and water garden business about 12 years ago as an off-shoot of our landscape business. It was a hobby, born out of frustration when I couldn’t find a local supplier for my own pond-building needs.
We carved out a 15-foot-by-20-foot section of our landscape warehouse and stocked it with pond supplies. Gradually, we added a outdoor fish tanks and aquatic plants under a lean-to. We hired one part-time employee to help me and we only opened the small pond store when I had spare time. We did no advertising, and we had no Website. Jeannie came in on the weekends to do the accounting and inventory. Customers trickled in.
Fast forward to 2010, we now employ more than 30 people at two retail centers with more than 30,000 square feet of covered retail space, a wholesale pond supply company and a 32-acre topsoil-production facility. It has taken a lot of hard work, sacrifice and determination to grow our business to this point. It takes more than capital; it takes a passion and commitment from you as well as from your family and your employees.
When is the right time to take that leap of faith to expand? It’s whenever you and your family of supporters are ready to put your hearts into it. You need a vision and to believe it yourself.
Surround yourself with positive, like-minded people. Don’t be afraid to get rid of the negative people, as they will be a cancer to your pond business. At a seminar, speaker advised: “All of you have at least one or two employees that you can go back and fire and your business will not miss them.” I took that speaker's message to heart.
After that seminar, I returned home and fired two of my ‘problem’ employees. As it turned out, we did not miss them. In fact, those problem employees had been a bad influence on my good employees. There was company-wide a sense of relief when they left. Don’t let problem employees hold you back. Keep moving forward.
While I didn't envision this manifestation of my business 12 years ago, I did have an idea and an open mind. I continue to watch, learn and explore every turn, whether at work or on vacation. For me, it is all about outdoor living. Every year, we try to expand our vision to enhance people’s outdoor living experiences.
In the past few years, we’ve added grills, outdoor furniture, birding supplies and additional selections of bulk landscape materials to diversify our offerings and meet our customers' needs. I never stop looking for new opportunities and revenue streams. In fact, we have a new idea coming to fruition soon, but that’s a whole other blog.
Very often new opportunities will find you. Discover your niche, define your vision and take that leap of faith.
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Leaps of Faith over the Years
Cole Farm & Landscape was our original landscape company. It now is defunct, but we continue to use the office building as the main umbrella ofice for all our companies.
We opened Pond Wise, our original retail store, in 1998. It continues to operate out of a large warehouse in our landscape office.
Across the Pond opened in Sprin 2003 on a separate 5-acre site in Huntsville, Alabama. The store now has more than 24,000 square feet of covered retail space including a Fish House, a Nature Garden, a Bulk Materials Yard and a Walking Trail.
We opened a second Across the Pond location on a 7-acre site in Florence, Alabama, in Spring 2007. This location has more than 11,000 square feet of retail space including greenhouses, a Fish House and a Bulk Materials Yard. |
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