The Big 10

In our 2012 State of the Industry report, we discovered that 58.9 percent of our readers generate less than $250,000 a year in revenue. Going another step forward, 83.9 percent make $1 million or less in revenue annually. That means just 16.1 percent of you reading this make more than $1 million in revenue.

There’s nothing wrong with being small. In fact, small businesses can often adapt quicker to changes in the marketplace. They can make decisions faster, and small business owners often have a better finger on the pulse of their businesses because they know more of their employees personally and are closer to the front lines.

But being larger isn’t a bad thing. Yes, there are certainly more headaches with a larger business because there are more moving pieces, but at the same time, there’s also increased opportunity. You have more money coming into the business, so you can invest more money back into your operations — whether that be giving bonuses to employees, building new or upgrading old facilities, or implementing new technologies to make the business more efficient.

No matter what your greenhouse operation’s size is, it’s a good goal to want to increase your total annual revenue each year, but sometimes that seems more like a pipedream than a reality. We understand that. So to help you out, we talked to 10 large operations about the innovative things they’re doing and asked them for their top tips for smaller greenhouse businesses as well. Now large is a subjective term. Large to a $50,000-a-year business might mean $100,000, but that would be small to a $500,000-a-year organization. So to clarify, when we say large, we’re defining that as they make at least $5 million or more in annual revenue. Many are much larger than that, but that’s the baseline of how we’re defining large in this package because not many growing operations are that size. In fact, again going back to this year’s State of the Industry report, only 6.6 percent of those who responded were larger than $4 million in revenue.

Now some of you reading this are probably excited to turn the pages and see what new tips you can pick up. Some of you might be wondering why we didn’t talk to you because you meet that criteria. Others of you might be annoyed because you’re smaller and don’t think that the big growers understand your business, your expenses, your region or your — insert anything else. And maybe they don’t. But they also haven’t gotten to where they are by dumb luck, so there are lessons and tips we can take away from large greenhouse operations to help us grow a little more and do things incrementally better.

So with that, I hope you enjoy your 2012 Big 10 report, and I hope you’re able to take away ideas to implement and concepts to focus on to make your greenhouse business even bigger for 2013.