Good day! Today I will continue to reveal in more detail the topic of a business plan for an interior and landscape design studio and the topic of the article: how to properly advertise your interior and landscape design studio
.
And if advertising and finding clients for creating interiors is not difficult, then advertising landscapes is much more difficult (for a simple reason, the services of landscape designers are used much less often).
Starting to consider this issue, I will divide all advertising of the design studio into:
- Advertising and promotion of the design studio on the Internet;
- Offline design studio advertising.
It is also worth dividing the areas of activity of the design studio themselves:
- Advertising of interior design services;
- Advertising for landscape creation services.
Let's start with advertising an interior and landscape design studio on the Internet, since it is almost the same:
How to open a landscaping company? How difficult is it?
Today, organizations involved in the design and landscaping of territories are popular. Naturally, every year there are more and more such companies, but the niche is not completely filled. Of course, landscape design of a site can be a profitable business.
But it’s worth noting right away that the development of any new company is fraught with some difficulties. And you will need a lot of starting capital for equipment, office rent and advertising. However, with the right approach, business can bring good income.
Risks of business in vertical gardening
The biggest risk is low promotion.
So far, people are little familiar with this direction in design. We've ranked ways to reduce risk: from cheapest to most expensive.
How to reduce the risk:
- For free.
Create advertisements on free boards: avito.ru, avizo.me and others. This is the most budget option for you, which only requires time. Select high-quality photos - your own or found on the Internet. Other people's photos should be without owner's tags, preferably from stock photos. Also, when working on boards, keywords are very important. We have selected a list of the most popular keywords from Yandex and Google searches. Use them in the titles and texts of your ads: one keyword - one ad. Naturally, make sure that the keywords are relevant to your activity: if you do not sell the plants themselves for the phytowall, it is better not to use this phrase.
| vertical gardening | designs for vertical gardening | plant wall |
| vertical interior gardening | modules for vertical gardening | phyto-picture |
| vertical gardening of an apartment | interior landscaping | phytomodule |
| vertical gardening design | landscaping of the apartment | phytomodule for vertical gardening |
| vertical gardening of premises | office landscaping | phytowall |
| vertical wall gardening | landscaping | phytowall in the apartment |
| vertical gardens | landscaping walls | phytodesign |
| living walls made of plants | plants for phytowall |
- For free.
Create pages on social networks. Not for cats, but for the sake of a portfolio and useful tips. What else can you post? See your most read competitors. - Almost free.
To begin with, take on the simplest tasks: maintenance and installation of systems. The production of structures is the most labor-intensive and financially expensive stage; you should not start with the complex ones. - Almost free.
Make an agreement with your friends: owners of an office, beauty salon or cafe. Give them a discount on your work - for the opportunity to leave business cards or flyers. Everyone will benefit: they will receive an influx of customers in such a pleasant place, and you will receive new customers. - Almost free.
Participate in exhibitions dedicated to construction and design. - Inexpensive.
Use as many advertising sources as possible. It doesn't have to be expensive TV or banners. Use targeted advertising on VKontakte and Facebook, the capabilities of Yandex Direct and Google Adwords. These systems are very friendly to budding entrepreneurs, have very simple step-by-step start-up guides and accept minimal amounts. In addition, promotional codes are sometimes given for advertising as a gift. - Possibly expensive
. Communicate with directors of shopping centers and enterprises, offer your services, make discounts. If this is psychologically difficult for you, you will have to hire a sales manager. - Possibly expensive.
Collaborate with businesses in related fields - flower shops, design studios, architectural bureaus, construction firms. - Possibly expensive.
For full-scale promotion you will need a website. To get started, use budget website builders, and in the future create your own - with the functions you need. Attract users with contextual advertising. Use the keywords we listed above and search for additional ones in Yandex Wordstat. - Expensive
. If you can afford it, hire a marketer for the initial promotion of your business.
Difficulty choosing the right place to work
. A big city means a lot of demand, but also more competitors. Small town - low competition and low demand. Consider this risk at the planning stage.
Production difficulties.
You must be a landscape designer, installer and manager at the same time. Or hire all these people and pay them a decent salary. Alternatively, hire beginners who are just gaining professional experience.
Difficulty of care.
Different plantings require different lighting, air temperatures and different watering. You need to carefully select your “neighbors” and have a good understanding of the issue.
Legal preparation of documents
Before you begin, you must complete all paperwork correctly. As a rule, a landscape design company is registered either as an individual entrepreneur (individual entrepreneur) or as an LLC (limited liability company). All documents are prepared by the tax service.
If you plan to make landscaping near private houses your business, you can register as an individual entrepreneur (it’s cheaper and faster). But if in the future you plan to cooperate with large companies or take on landscaping and preservation of urban areas (for example, parks), then it is better to form an LLC.
About promotion
Our main source is the company website. It is new and is constantly being improved - we analyze the behavior of those who visit it and make it so that it is convenient for customers to use it and find the information they need.
Another source is the website of the online store greenston.by, which presents products for interior landscaping. We are planning to launch it in May.
We participate in interior exhibitions, in particular in the Minsk Salon during design week. They presented their pots and models of flowerpots. We are planning joint events with furniture showrooms and companies that offer interior products.
We cooperate with interior designers and architects. They are usually looking for interesting planters for their projects, and we help them choose the right options for both aesthetics and budget.
Landscape design: business plan
Opening your own business is never easy. And some difficulties await you if your calling is landscape design. In this case, the business plan must include several mandatory points.
- Legal registration of the organization.
- Determining the category of clients.
- Opening a design studio where you can receive clients and provide them with introductory information.
- Recruitment of employees and proper distribution of responsibilities.
- Purchase of necessary equipment.
- Cooperation agreements with certain manufacturing companies.
- Advertising your company.
By following this plan, you can achieve significant success in this business. Therefore, it is worth stopping at each of the above points and considering all possible options.
How it works, or how we started
The first priority is tree pruning and removal. After studying the procedure for obtaining official permission through the municipality, I advertised using all known groups and sites. Little by little orders began to appear: two or three per month. In other words, a person wanted to demolish a dead tree that bothered him, but municipalities and private owners billed them 12-15 thousand rubles. We worked for 8,000, of which 2,200 rubles were spent on renting a hydraulic lift, buying a couple of liters of gasoline, oil and sharpening a chain.
For a small surcharge (1000-1500), we sawed the logging residues into small firewood, and customers gladly took them for themselves. Export is always negotiated separately.
Additional income from cooperation
Working with homeowners associations and companies turned out to be very beneficial. They always order from 3 to 20 trees, and in a couple of days you can earn about 100,000, while the cost of consumables and rent is about 30-35 thousand. In 2-3 days you can earn 20-25 thousand per person. For particularly complex trees, which municipalities refuse due to unprofessional sawyers, people are willing to pay up to 25 thousand.
People are willing to pay for tree pruning and removal.
For someone, it’s not the whole tree that’s in the way, but one branch. In this case, several addresses are collected, a hydraulic lift is hired, and a detour is made.
It would seem that the cost of 1-2 thousand is small, but we got 4, less often 5 addresses.
In the remaining time, you can, for example, hang up an air conditioner, cut down a light pole, get a ball from the roof - you can make money on anything. The demand for tree trimming is year-round.
Opening an office for a landscape company
Some businessmen in this field claim that at the initial stages they did not even have their own office. However, it is better to rent and equip the premises. Although having your own office is associated with additional costs, it will help you organize your work properly and look more respectable in the eyes of future clients.
It is best to open a studio in the city center, although in this case the location of the office is not as important as, for example, advertising. The room should be spacious, bright and well equipped. Since you'll be offering design and landscaping to clients, your office needs to demonstrate that you have a real eye for design.
In addition to offices, the office should have an entrance hall or waiting room with comfortable furniture. You can decorate it with plants and other decorative items, and hang photos of your projects on the walls (if you have them, of course).
It is advisable to have a telephone line in the office, this will make it more convenient to communicate with clients and suppliers.
About the audience
Most often, legal entities request complex landscaping. We develop a design project for them, supply everything necessary for this, provide planting and maintenance.
We can highlight the following cases when people contact us:
1. Urgent meeting and reception of foreign delegations , when you need to quickly make the office beautiful. In Europe, office greening has long been an integral part of interior design. Our businessmen, traveling and visiting partners, see this. When guests arrive, wanting to show their best side, they turn to us.
2. Arrangement of a new office . Nowadays it is fashionable to create eco-space for employees, so they are trying to design new offices in accordance with modern trends. The perception of the office is so positive.
3. Maintaining the office environment . For some premises, landscaping can be called a necessity. Often these are IT companies with open space offices. For them, landscaping plays not so much an aesthetic function as a health one. After all, plants form a microclimate, increase humidity, absorb formaldehyde released from furniture, and clean the air of pathogenic bacteria. The psycho-emotional state improves: green color has a positive effect on people.
Plants can also divide space into functional zones, replacing partitions, which is also important for large rooms.
Photo courtesy of the author
Cafes, restaurants, and public places that value a cozy atmosphere are appealing. For such clients, pots and plants must be as stable as possible, since there is a high risk of damage due to the large flow of people.
Individuals also began to apply. Most often these are people between 30 and 40 years old who want to decorate their new apartments in a stylish and modern way and create a lively, cozy interior.
How to decide on the category of clients?
Many people associate this type of activity more with decorating the area near private houses. In fact, clients (landscape design and any other field of art) are not limited to “rich private owners.”
Although if you have just started working, then it is best to start with them, since the projects here are small.
In addition, city organizations often use the services of such companies. After all, in almost every city there are public gardens, parks and areas that need beautification, landscaping and preservation. For example, you can landscape the area near a school or plant several bright flower beds in the city center.
There are quite a lot of possibilities here. But city orders in most cases are voluminous and require not only the creation of a specific design, but also regular maintenance of the areas. In addition, the city administration most often uses the services of companies that already have a portfolio and a good reputation.
From the office to the garden plots...
“I started studying landscape design because of my heart: I always liked working with plants and wanted to create beauty for people. I am a marketing economist by training; I worked for the Atlant-M holding for 12 years. In 2005 she graduated from landscape design courses. And I realized that this direction can be not only a hobby, but also a profession.
From 2005 to 2009, I practiced as a private landscape designer, and was constantly faced with a situation where I was invited to redo something on the site after the work of others: the plants were stunted, nothing grew, and it did not look aesthetically pleasing. I told my husband about this, to which he said: “Stop whining, open a company and do as you see fit.”
So at the end of 2010 ours appeared.
The assets were only $300, a personal car that became a company car, and a great desire to engage in landscape design.
To open a company, we rented a legal address; there was no office right away. The husband became a co-founder and often proposed various ideas, for example, to supply plants from European nurseries, develop cooperation with external landscape designers, etc.
We immediately formulated three principles of our work:
1. We only hire full-time employees, despite the fact that the business is highly seasonal and most competing companies prefer to use the services of temporary workers. But we decided that for high quality work we need people who will develop with the company.
2. We conduct business legally to protect the company and offer clients transparent working conditions.
3. We create gardens for life - thoughtful, high-quality and beautiful.
And they began to engage in landscape design of personal plots. In the first year we received about 15 orders. The number of employees working on the creation of projects and their implementation reached 10 people: the director, that is, me, 2 designers, an accountant, and workers.
Photo courtesy of the author
As soon as we opened (and we did it in the winter - during the off-season), we began to engage in SEO promotion of our website. And by the spring of 2011, it was in the top organic search results for all queries. Not because it was somehow incredible, but because few of the competitors actually had a website at that time.
At that time, I didn’t think about profitability and profit at all. All thoughts were about creativity - I was burning with the desire to give beauty to this world, I was inspired by people’s reactions, their gratitude and sparkling eyes.
What we earned allowed us to provide for the needs of the company, rent an office and pay staff. The last thing I thought about was earning money myself. The realization that you need to look at the numbers and manage them came only after some time.
All functions of the company, except for the execution of work and accounting, lay with me: hiring personnel, maintaining documentation, working with clients, promotion, searching and purchasing materials for work, establishing relationships with partners, organizing work and monitoring execution, delivery of workers and materials to objects.
By the way, at that time I had two small children, the youngest of whom was 1.5 years old. For the first few years, the husband did not take part in operational management; he remained employed as the financial director of one of the companies.
Since we were constantly faced with a lack of planting material, we organized the supply of ornamental plants from Latvia. All issues were resolved on our own - negotiations with transport companies, export documents, customs clearance, obtaining phytosanitary certificates.
In 2012, we opened our own office, the number of staff reached 14 people, and we completed our first order abroad - in Smolensk, Russia. After this order, clients from Russia began to contact us.
There were some oddities at the start. In the very first year, in the spring of 2011, we worked on a project in Molodechno for the Minsk Furniture Center. This is the territory of the enterprise, which the managers decided to make beautiful. We approved the project, purchased all the necessary materials and plants.
Photo courtesy of the author
And here is the team, ready to work. They start digging in the places where plants need to be planted, and the shovel rests on the concrete. Sometimes this happens, construction waste comes across. That’s why I say: “Dig to the right” - and there is concrete. “And to the left?” - concrete again! “And forward?” - concrete again!
That is, the entire area has a lawn, and everywhere under it at a depth of 15 centimeters there is a layer of concrete. A lot of plants have been purchased and people are waiting!
They began to find out where there was still concrete. Workers, “probing” the site with pitchforks, identified “pockets” without concrete. But this is still not what we planned. I stood, looked at this site and thought. The solution came to this: where possible, they made a beautiful outline of plants. And where there was concrete, they brought earth, made a hill up to 40 centimeters high and planted the planned plants on it. Now it looks like the designer's intention.
My husband then told me: “A professional is not someone who can do well when everything is fine. A professional is one who does good when everything is bad.”
Landscape design equipment
You will need a lot of special equipment to help you practice the art called landscaping. A business plan must include the purchase of the most necessary equipment.
First, you should take care of your gardening equipment. In particular, you will probably need pruning shears, garden shears, a power saw and a power planer. It’s hard to imagine a garden without a well-groomed green lawn, so don’t forget to add a lawn mower to your shopping list. You will need small tools for installing certain decorations, in particular, screwdrivers, hacksaws, and chisels. And, of course, it’s hard to imagine working in the garden without shovels, rakes and other equipment.
Naturally, as your company develops, the equipment set will be constantly replenished. But in the initial stages, the simplest things will suffice.
Is mowing the grass profitable?
The next source of income is mowing the grass. Two trimmers that easily fit in a car, a can of gasoline and a roll of fishing line are all you need to earn from 2 to 5 thousand per person in an evening.
Again, small orders were collected from grandmothers to mow the yard for 500 rubles, as well as large orders, for example, mowing the entire territory of the HOA or children's parks. The main thing is not to inflate the price.
We charge an average of 300 rubles per hundred square meters. This is an average price that has been established for a long time. The period of work is from April to November. In the three summer months, we didn’t know what to choose; they were in great demand.
There is one secret here: the trimmers are Chinese, but the consumables are professional, namely “Husqvarna T35″ and “Husqvarna T45″ reels. Special oil for two-stroke engines is also “Husqvarna” or “Stihl”, because cheap oil gets hot and you have to take long breaks. It is also better to choose a fishing line with a “Square” section and, preferably, not the cheapest one.
Lawnmowers for mowing the lawn were rented. There is much less demand for them.
Stones and plants for landscape design - where to get the necessary decorations?
Every aspiring businessman asks the question “where to get the necessary materials.” After all, a wide variety of elements are used in landscape design. These include plants, sculptures, and irrigation systems. Naturally, you can rent a room where a dendrologist or gardener will grow and care for plants. But this is a long and painstaking task.
Therefore, before opening a company, it is worth visiting several stores, construction supermarkets and, if necessary, drawing up an agreement with manufacturers. In some cases, landscape design specialists work closely with architectural agencies.
It is worth thinking about where you will get stone for landscape design, which, by the way, is an integral attribute of a beautiful garden. You may need benches, forged fences, and gazebos while working. Do not ignore the importance of the presence of decorative elements and building materials.
Portrait of your client
The main customers of phytodesign are, first of all, entrepreneurs.
- Large shopping centers.
Research in the USA has shown that stores and shopping centers with green interiors receive more sales revenue. - Offices
. According to studies, employees in such offices get sick less and are more tolerant of colleagues and superiors. In addition, eco-trend is fashionable and stylish. - Beauty salons, cafes, clubs, fitness centers, private clinics.
If there is a choice between two similar establishments, the client will often choose the one with live plants. - City administrations.
Despite all the inertia and bureaucracy, the authorities can appreciate the advantages of phytowalls: they hide the shortcomings of repairs, equalize the air temperature in the room and isolate from noise. - You may also interest private clients and
apartment owners within the city with your idea.
What kind of specialists will you need?
Naturally, the size of your staff will directly depend on how large orders the company plans to handle. The key worker is the designer.
It is he who will create projects, determine suitable landscape design styles, decide where to plant plants and create flower beds. The success and popularity of your enterprise largely depends on the innate taste of this person.
It is advisable that the design worker has the appropriate education and from time to time attends refresher courses, where you can always learn about new methods, styles and little tricks that will be necessary when improving the territory.
Another important person is a dendrologist. It is he who will be responsible for selecting, planting and caring for plants. After all, some exotic flowers or trees can only live in specific environmental conditions (for example, near water or in constant shade). Some landscaping plants simply cannot be planted next to each other. In addition, even trees can be “sick”, and the dendrologist will deal with their treatment and care.
In addition, your company will need a foreman - a person who can organize and monitor the process of updating the territory. The foreman must be familiar with basic construction technologies and know the necessary rules, standards and laws. And, naturally, you will need simple construction workers who, in fact, will be engaged in construction work.
It's no secret that landscaping work is carried out in the warm season. But what to do with employees in winter? It’s worth saying right away that if you have found a truly talented designer and dendrologist, you should under no circumstances let them go; during the months of “downtime” continue to pay them a salary. But ordinary builders can be offered seasonal work and increase their number as needed.
How to make money on knowledge about landscaping and courtyard areas
Good afternoon, my name is Anton. I live in a small town in the Samara region, whose population is about 200 thousand people. Since 2012, I have been working as an engineer in a municipal budget institution for a small salary. I am married, we have a daughter. Due to the sharp rise in the dollar, there was not enough money for any purchases, and I decided to start a business related to my work.
Several shelves have accumulated applications for improvement in the housing and communal services department, but the municipality has no money.
People are ready to trim trees, plant a lawn near their house, or mow the grass, but all official offices put a huge price tag on their services and, for example, pruning one tree officially costs more than 10,000 rubles. This is where our work begins.
I decided to try to make money by landscaping.
How did I decide to do this job?
Since 2012, I had to work with various types of professional sawyers, mowers and gardeners. I selected professionals - two people, we talked and decided to act. We purchased 2 “Partner 454” mowers, one “Husqvarna 365” professional saw (at a pawn shop), and the second, a Chinese “Champion”, was inherited. The rest of the equipment and inventory can be easily rented. For example, a garden roller for rolling a lawn can easily be rented at a store like Usadba for 500 rubles and returned in the evening, once it’s finished working.
Required software
If you decide to get serious about landscape design, then you will need the appropriate software. Your office should have at least one computer with the necessary programs, as well as a camera or camera.
The fact is that modern computer programs allow you to do virtual design. After the first visit to the site and its filming, you will be able to use the computer to create an approximate view of the territory after the design work has been carried out. This will be useful not only for you, but also for your clients. Modern programs are created in such a way that they allow you to see literally every little thing: what a particular area will look like in magnification, what view will open from the owners’ window, how the style you have chosen will look in winter or autumn.
This type of work scheme has many advantages. Your clients will have the opportunity to see the result before work begins and, if necessary, adjust it. Naturally, such programs are not cheap, but they will help save a lot of money and time in the future. And, of course, at least one employee of your company must thoroughly master the program you have chosen.
What are phytowalls
We are paying a heavy price for civilization. Living within the city means few walks, little fresh air. The result is headaches, bad mood and stress. But how nice it can be to escape into the forest or park - or, as an option, to arrange a piece of the park at home or in your own office. This interior solution is not only a plus for the environment, but also a very stylish decor. The phytowall will decorate an existing wall or serve as a partition and zone the room.
The design of a phytowall (or smaller options - phytomodules, phytopictures) is a plastic or metal profile to which containers with soil are attached. The system is placed at a distance of 6-8 cm from the wall. The living structure is equipped with automatic watering with a timer. Various types of plants are planted in boxes - from moss to decorative flowering ones. Since watering and spraying result in constant humidity, the wall of the room is insulated using PVC film. The design also includes a liquid tray and a pump for lifting water. The power depends on the height of the green zone: to raise water by 1 m, the pump must have 1.5 m of operating pressure.
Landscaping: project stages
Naturally, you can draw up a project plan yourself. But in most cases it is the same.
- First, one of the specialists goes to the site, studies it, takes the necessary photographs, and determines the soil characteristics.
- Further work is carried out with the participation of both the designer and the dendrologist. Together they draw up planting plans. In addition, each landscape element is considered separately. For example, experts decide what the flowerbed will look like and how best to create an alpine slide.
- Using computer programs, a general and detailed plan of landscape work is drawn up. The resulting developments are demonstrated to the client and, if necessary, the necessary amendments are made.
Only after this does construction work begin, the cost and duration of which is determined depending on the size and characteristics of the site.
Staff
The professionalism of the staff plays a decisive role in the activities of the landscape design studio. The number of employees depends on the volume of work and the range of services provided. As a rule, a team of 4-5 people is needed to work on one site.
When looking for employees, it is important to find a qualified landscape designer. The company's reputation will depend on his work. The salary of such specialists is $800-1500 per month. This must be taken into account when drawing up a landscape design business plan. The average company of this type includes builders, a surveyor, a dendrologist, and a foreman.
In the process of activity, the owner of a landscape design studio must control the work of his subordinates, and at all stages of order fulfillment.
How to advertise correctly?
Of course, a new landscape design company needs high-quality advertising. In the first few months, it is promotions that will be able to create a flow of customers. For the purpose of business development, flyers, banners, radio and newspaper advertisements can be used.
Your company's own website will also be extremely useful. Clients will be able to familiarize themselves with the range of your services, as well as your pricing policy and samples of the work you have done.
Of course, landscape design can become a very profitable business, since the costs of its creation are not at all high compared to possible earnings. But here you need to remember two things. Firstly, the success of your business will directly depend on the talent and skill of your employees. Secondly, landscape design is a seasonal business, so you should prepare for the fact that for several months a year you will be without work and, accordingly, without income.
About finances
Every day we receive 1-3 requests specifically for complex landscaping, not counting orders “buy a pot” or “buy a flower”. This result pleases us and gives us an understanding that the service is promising and in demand.
How much does it cost to do office landscaping? A pot with a plant, for example a small bonsai (these are usually given as a gift to employees or the director), will cost from 50 Belarusian rubles (about $25). A floor composition (pot + plant + soil and planting) costs 150−250 Belarusian rubles ($75−125).
Photo courtesy of the author
The most expensive order we made cost just under 25,000 Belarusian rubles ($12.5 thousand) - several floors of an office, completely landscaped with custom-made pots. It took a month to produce the pots themselves, and planting took another three days.
We have a planned profitability of 30%, and we are trying to reach it.
Business development prospects
Competition in the field of landscape design is quite high, but all organizations of this type are concentrated in the high price segment. At the same time, demand exists among people with average incomes. Experts say that this particular niche has not yet been fully occupied.
If we analyze potential customers, not everyone has yet realized the importance of landscape design. But at the same time, the concept that caring for a garden and decorating a country property is the work of professionals is gradually coming to our landowners. This indicates that this type of business has great development prospects.
How to choose equipment for activities
You need to worry about establishing business connections in advance: find frame manufacturers, suppliers of indoor plants. Wholesale purchases will allow you to save on consumables and, accordingly, earn money. For the activity you will also need classic gardening tools: scissors, pruners. You can’t do without purchasing soil (you can make soil for planting yourself). It is recommended to study the technology of vertical planting and visit special exhibitions.
