Fun-loving landscapers do serious business

Lebo Newman and Rick Clark kiss the feet of their top employees.

Really kiss their feet.

A smooch on the shoes from the owners is one of the rewards for the employees of the month at Signature Landscapes, a fast-growing company in Reno owned by Newman and Clark.

They have plenty of shoes to kiss.

A year ago, the company had nine employees.Today, it has 36 and that's during the relatively slow days of winter.

At its summertime peak, Signature Landscapes had 58 employees tending the landscapes of about 50 customers.

The shoe-kissing ceremonies aren't isolated events.

A sense of fun permeates the two-year-old company.

Newman's business card identifies him as H.I.G., while Clark's card identifies him H.O.G.

Translation? "Head Inside Guy" and "Head Outside Guy." But while the owners want to have fun at work, they also are focused squarely on aggressive growth targets.

They want to double the size of their company within the next couple of years "We know how to run a large company," Newman said a few days ago.

"If you're going to do it, you might as well do it big." They'll take the next step in that direction this winter when they launch an operation to handle installation of high-end residential landscaping.

Currently, almost all Signature Landscapes' business is commercial jobs, and Newman said the addition of a fullscale residential operation isn't a simple matter.

"It's a totally different beast," he said.

"Either you're in it or you're not." The company made its mark in the commercial side of the business in 2002.

When the Nevada Landscape Association conducted its awards banquet late last year, Signature Landscapes took home the top trophies in six of 10 categories and this in a competition that drew entries from throughout the state.

The common element in the company's prize-winning work, Clark explained, is fairly simple landscaping maintained with an impeccable eye for detail.

Signature Landscapes won awards for its installations at Foothill Industrial Park and the Double Diamond Professional Center in south Reno.

Neither landscaping is flashy, but neither has a leaf out of place.

That's the story, too, at the Timber Hills apartment complex at Talbot Lane and South McCarran Boulevard, where Signature Landscapes won honors for its renovation work.

"We just cleaned up, fed it and renovated the turf," explained Clark.

Commercial landscaping maintenance is seasonal Signature Landscapes' workload falls by about 30 percent during the winter but it doesn't come to a halt when cold weather arrives.

"We're out doing the horticultural things we didn't have time to do in the summer," said Clark.

The company also hunts down snow-removal contracts to keep its employees busy.

Because impeccable execution is the company's theme, Clark and Newman spend much of their workday ensuring that employees hear the need for constant improvement.

"Never pass up an opportunity to teach," is Newman's mantra.

The development of a strong employee group is all the more important because landscaping starts off as a capital-intensive business pickup trucks and gear that quickly becomes labor-intensive.

None of that comes as a surprise to Clark and Newman, who long ago worked together in a landscaping business in California and competed against one another as owners of their own firms before joining forces again in Reno in mid- 2001.

When they created Signature Landscapes, Clark and Newman agreed that they'd pursue challenging work and have a good time.

"If you're right with everything else, the money will follow," Clark said.

So far, it's working.

"We had a tremendous growth spurt last year," said Newman.

"It was a fun ride."