From the beginning (LESCO supplement)

Thirty years ago, Phil Gardner was a golf course superintendent looking to move to Florida. LESCO gave him that opportunity.

Gardner, now manager of international and national accounts, started with LESCO in 1976. For 10 years before joining the company, he was the golf course superintendent at Blackhawk Golf Club in Galena, Ohio, and Minerva Lake Golf Club in Columbus, Ohio.

While a superintendent, Gardner developed a relationship with Jim FitzGibbon, the co-founder of the LESCO. FitzGibbon accompanied the company’s sales representative that called on Gardner and attended the Ohio Turfgrass Conference & Show and several turfgrass field days in the area. They talked and hit it off.

At the time, Gardner wanted to move to Florida. FitzGibbon told him about his idea of delivering various products to golf course superintendents with a truck.

“Jim explained the Stores-on-Wheels concept to me, and it was interesting,” Gardner says. “At the time, there was no showroom of products for superintendents. You always went through the manufacturer. There was no place to look around and shop. The reason why I went to Florida was to see about breaking new territory with the truck.”

Before Gardner went to Florida, FitzGibbon already had a sales rep there, but he didn’t work out because he used the truck as a warehouse instead of visiting courses with it, according to Gardner.

“At that time, we didn’t know if the truck would work,” he says. “I wanted to go to Florida, but I didn’t know much about warm-season grass. So I figured if working on the LESCO truck didn’t work out, I would learn about warm-season grass and go back to being a golf course superintendent. But in the first three or four months, we knew it would work, and there was no turning back.”

Gardner spent 10 years in Florida. His territory started out as the entire state. He spent three years on the truck and started calling on way too many golf courses – 200 or more a month. Once superintendents started buying products, they wanted to do so more frequently, so Gardner needed to make more stops. The Florida territory eventually was split in two, and Gardner became a regional manager.

When Gardner was regional manager, the company built a fertilizer plant and warehouse in Florida to support its business. He oversaw the operations of both.

“There was a lot of competition in the state, so the truck, warehouse and plant gave us advantages,” he says. “The advantage of the truck was that you could sells odds and ends right there in front of the superintendents, then work your way up to selling them pesticides, fertilizer and controllers.”

Gardner says the key to making the truck work now is the same as making it work back then – consistency.

“You need to keep a route of consistency,” he says. “Every two weeks, I’d always be back to the same courses regardless of what the superintendents were buying. I always believed a salesman who didn’t make it on the truck didn’t follow that consistent path.”

Gardner believed that even though some superintendents might not buy much, or anything at all, that shouldn’t deter a sales rep from consistently visiting them. The course might find new money or the superintendent might move on to another course with a much larger budget. Either way, building a relationship was the key.

After his success in Florida, Gardner was asked to relocate to Cleveland to work in the corporate office.

Gardner has been with the company for so long because he enjoys the work, has worked hard to develop many relationships throughout the country and loves the company.

“One of the things during my 30 years with LESCO is that I was fortunate to be with the company when it was in a growing mode,” he says. “I did a lot of different things, such as work in plants, service centers, the lawn care division, and my job never became boring. One key to my success is that I always remember who the customer is and who the important people are.”

In short, he never forgot his roots as a superintendent and those early days pioneering the Stores-on-Wheels.