Dan Arnsperger is well known in Northwest Arkansas for his paintings within the CPG (shopper packaged items) business. Previous this yr, even though, he began a brand new task that took him on a moderately other trail. He’s nonetheless within the shopper trade, most effective now focused on services and products and no longer merchandise.
Arnsperger began in January because the CEO of Blue Ribbon Industries, a privately held landscaping trade in Rogers with about 120 staff.
A mutual trade connection attached Arnsperger past due closing yr to the corporate’s possession crew. Armed with a non-public fairness funding from one of the vital state’s wealthiest households, Blue Ribbon principals sought the trade’ first CEO to lend a hand enhance general profitability and shepherd the corporate via its subsequent expansion level.
“I wouldn’t name [2023] a transition yr, nevertheless it’s a yr of center of attention,” Arnsperger mentioned in a contemporary interview from the corporate’s headquarters on South Bellview Highway.
Arnsperger admits his landscaping wisdom is restricted, joking that he must discover ways to get started a lawnmower.
“I made that transparent after I met with the house owners,” he defined. “If you want anyone to move out with crews and display them do their paintings higher, I’m no longer it. However, if you wish to have someone that understands flip round a P&L and get into a shopper’s thoughts and determine meet their wishes, that’s what I need to do all day lengthy.”
PROMINENT BACKING
The Blass (industrial actual property) and Stephens (finance) households, two outstanding names in central Arkansas trade circles, personal Blue Ribbon, the made from more than one acquisitions in Northwest Arkansas over the last few years.
The primary deal closed in past due 2018 when Alex Blass, a spouse at industrial actual property company Cushman & Wakefield/Sage Companions in Rogers, and Nathan Fairchild, a Benton County development contractor, purchased Rodden Panorama Co. from Ross Rodden and rebranded as NWA Flooring Services and products. Fairchild later exited the project in December 2021.
In April 2020, that entity received Blue Ribbon Lawns from Cari DeLaughter and rebranded once more. That very same yr, the corporate finished building of a multitenant, 35,000-square-foot place of business/warehouse development on South Bellview Highway for its Rogers headquarters.
In Would possibly 2022, the corporate picked up a multimillion-dollar non-public fairness injection (undisclosed) from the heirs of Little Rock financier Warren Stephens, chairman, president and CEO of Stephens Inc., a privately held funding financial institution. That resulted in every other acquisition a couple of months later when Blue Ribbon purchased Leisurescapes from Angela Hayward.
Accompanying that expansion, Blue Ribbon had varied to the purpose that it owned and operated 5 divisions encompassing flooring services and products (landscaping), trucking, swimming pools, website services and products and farms.
“After [the Stephens investment], the considering used to be to pump the brakes on fast expansion in all other instructions and take a while to determine what we need to be shifting ahead,” mentioned Blass, Blue Ribbon’s president. “There’s no scarcity of alternatives in Northwest Arkansas presently, nevertheless it used to be laborious to have sufficient senior management with eyes on the entirety concurrently. We’re pulling again, specializing in our core competencies, and increasing into extra issues later relatively than leaping within the deep finish all of sudden.”
As the brand new CEO, Arnsperger spent his first 90 days assessing Blue Ribbon’s trade fashion and asking some difficult questions. He concluded that landscaping is and must be the corporate’s core running trade.
“The ones different issues are nice alternatives, however we have now a chance to be beautiful particular in landscaping,” he mentioned. “Quite than biting off these types of items, let’s create two distinct spaces of center of attention — grounds services and products [landscaping and pools] and our website trade; earth/website paintings and our roll off dumpster trade.”
Arnsperger oversees the grounds services and products department, complemented via Hayward, who runs the upkeep trade, and Doug Mineart, who labored for Blue Ribbon Lawns for twenty years. He’s director of operations for the set up trade.
“They know all our shoppers and our other folks they usually’re each implausible,” Arnsperger mentioned.
Blass manages the website trade. He’s additionally a spouse and contributor at Sage Companions, one of the vital state’s main industrial actual property builders.
Blue Ribbon totaled slightly greater than $15 million in income closing yr — all from the landscaping trade — however the corporate remained unprofitable.
“We’re making headway, however we aren’t there but,” Arnsperger mentioned.
Blue Ribbon’s buyer base is ready 70% residential and 30% industrial, break up more or less 50/50 between set up/new tasks and upkeep.
“We do high-end industrial, however we expect the expansion alternative is obtaining top rate [residential] shoppers,” Arnsperger mentioned. “Individuals who want the carrier and wish their yards to appear just right.”
INDUSTRY THREATS
Arnsperger mentioned throttling Blue Ribbon again from the previous few years of fast expansion mode is going in opposition to his grain. He has the imaginative and prescient to increase Blue Ribbon to different markets out of doors Northwest Arkansas. However that’s down the street. At the moment, high quality carrier and using productiveness are the the most important objectives.
“High quality is task No. 1 for us,” he mentioned. “We’re an excessively low barrier-to-entry marketplace. You’ll be able to purchase a truck and lawnmower these days and be my competitor. I’d believe north of 100 [companies] in Northwest Arkansas a competitor on this marketplace, and that’s so much.
“It’s not that i am nervous about 4 Seasons [Landscaping] or Sharum’s or whoever poaching our shoppers. I’m nervous about giving shoppers a reason why to have an interest. Our supply of high quality is our largest risk. We need to ship the best quality available on the market.”
Arnsperger moved to the area first of all to paintings for Procter & Gamble (2000-2004) greater than twenty years in the past and has remained plugged into the CPG group ever since.
His enjoy lies in using transformational exchange and expansion, taking pictures new income and extending shareholder worth.
His management and technique have contributed to expansion in dozens of CPG classes, maximum just lately because the CEO and minority shareholder of Glad Egg Co., a multi-national, free-range egg logo owned via Noble Meals, the most important egg corporate in the UK.
The corporate’s U.S. headquarters is in Rogers. In 5 years as leader govt (2017-2022), he helped an organization with double-digit adverse margins turn out to be successful whilst rising web income from about $30 million to over $120 million.
That have used to be essential to getting his present task.
“He had a historical past of enjoying an integral position with more than one corporations in positioning them for the next move in their adventure,” Blass mentioned. “Along with his background, he gained over the Stephens [family] participants, myself, and my dad [Gus Blass], too.”
