How does a company that has 275 acres of production area, offers a diverse product line, and serves more than 1,800 customers keep everything running smoothly? The answer is to divide and conquer. That’s the system Prides Corner Farms started using about seven years ago and has seen great success with.
“We’ve divided the nursery into 17 distinct nurseries,” says Mark Sellew, president and owner of Prides Corner Farms. “We have a management team within each of those 17 distinct crop groups, centered around specific plants, and they, in that capacity, are able to get ownership of the plants they grow and do the fine work that makes the difference between growing a great plant and an average plant.”
In each crop group there is a team leader, and three to four assistant team leaders. Then each team has a labor force of up to 10 people, depending on the type of workload at a certain time of the year. He has seen a positive outcome from spreading out the responsibilities.
“When you spread ownership out into the nursery, you see a lot more motivation,” he says.
Having a good work force has been crucial for Prides Corner Farms, especially when the company lost 150 employees to an I-9 audit last year. Part of how the company builds a good team is focusing on its younger staff. Sellew says the company makes sure to get them out of the nursery, get them to seminars, and move them around.
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Specifics Name: Prides Corner Farms Headquarters: Lebanon, Conn. Founded: 1979 Production space: 275 acres Major crops: Nursery stock, perennials, roses, trees and edibles Major customers: Independent garden centers and landscapers Number of employees: 500 during peak-time Annual revenue: $30 million |
“With young people, it’s all about your ability to learn,” he says. “A lot of the work in our industry is tough, repetitive work. You need to make sure that you’re making the work interesting and motivating for the young person. And that means you’ve got to have them constantly learning.”
Sellew realizes that developing that good work force is not always an easy task.
“It’s hard to do — you can say that,” he says. “We’re learning every day here.”
Although Prides Corner Farms’ team is a critical part of the company, it’s its relationships with customers that make a big impact.
“We try to really have a partnership attitude as it relates to our customers,” Sellew says. “Understanding our customers as individuals and having that partnership attitude is, to me, so critical.”
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3 Tips from Mark Sellew 1. Get on the road and visit your customers. “Get to know them and find out what you have to do to be relevant in this crowded, competitive marketplace.” 2. Develop a great team. 3. Diversify your product line.“Continually diversify and have new plants. Diversity is more complex, but it’s more secure financially to have a more diverse inventory.” |
For more: Prides Corner Farms, (800) 437-5168 or www.pridescorner.com
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