Hampton West
| Role | Cofounder, design, operations |
|---|---|
| Services | Landscape installation + maintenance |
Overview
After eight years working from home as an independent contractor, I got a little stir-crazy and took a part-time summer job with a local landscape company as an excuse to get outside. During my time there, I met Nat, a longtime veteran of the industry. The two of us bonded over a shared intensity and pride in our work, and we decided to go into business together by starting Hampton West, an homage to his childhood growing up in Westhampton, NY.
We started with a beat-up $2,000 truck and posts on Craigslist offering aeration/fertilization, shrub trimming, and small planting projects. Nat was blessed with the “gift of gab”, as he often said, and we soon found ourselves with a regular mow route and partnership with a national tree company as their recommended new-planting contact. I handled billing and other administrative tasks, Nat handled our expanding client relationships, and we did all of the work together.
At the end of our first season, we were referred by a mow client to a family that had recently moved to the neighborhood - they wanted to rip out about 5,000 square feet of overgrowth in the rear of their property. We took the demolition job and got it done, after which they gave me the opportunity to pitch a design to replace that area. I had never done any landscape design, but I had always had strong aesthetic opinions and a willingness to learn, so I taught myself SketchUp and pitched a Japanese-style meditation garden. They accepted the bid and trusted me to execute, and that project went on to receive a national Award of Excellence from the NALP.
By the time that project completed we were into our second full year, and had expanded to three trucks and two crews - Nat led maintenance while I ran operations and our growing installation division. The company grew faster than either of us expected, and by the end of that second season I found myself on a six-figure commercial project at a four-building office park. By this point, though, the visions Nat and I had for the company had begun to diverge, and at the conclusion of the season we made the difficult decision to part ways. Hampton West was my first real experience of the chaos of business ownership, and I’ll always be grateful for Nat’s role in my life as a mentor, friend, and business partner.
