Stephens family investment, new CEO bolster Blue Ribbon Industries

Dan Arnsperger is widely known in Northwest Arkansas for his work in the CPG (consumer packaged goods) industry. Earlier this year, though, he started a new job that took him on a slightly different path. He’s still in the consumer business, only now centered on services and not products.

Arnsperger started in January as the CEO of Blue Ribbon Industries, a privately held landscaping business in Rogers with about 120 employees.

A mutual business connection connected Arnsperger late last year to the company’s ownership group. Armed with a private equity investment from one of the state’s wealthiest families, Blue Ribbon principals sought the business’ first CEO to help improve overall profitability and shepherd the company through its next growth stage.

“I wouldn’t call [2023] a transition year, but it’s a year of focus,” Arnsperger said in a recent interview from the company’s headquarters on South Bellview Road.

Arnsperger admits his landscaping knowledge is limited, joking that he needs to learn how to start a lawnmower.

“I made that clear when I met with the owners,” he explained. “If you need someone to go out with crews and show them how to do their work better, I’m not it. But, if you want somebody that understands how to turn around a P&L and get into a consumer’s mind and figure out how to meet their needs, that’s what I want to do all day long.”

PROMINENT BACKING
The Blass (commercial real estate) and Stephens (finance) families, two prominent names in central Arkansas business circles, own Blue Ribbon, the product of multiple acquisitions in Northwest Arkansas over the past few years.

The first deal closed in late 2018 when Alex Blass, a partner at commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield/Sage Partners in Rogers, and Nathan Fairchild, a Benton County building contractor, bought Rodden Landscape Co. from Ross Rodden and rebranded as NWA Ground Services. Fairchild later exited the venture in December 2021.

In April 2020, that entity acquired Blue Ribbon Lawns from Cari DeLaughter and rebranded again. That same year, the company completed construction of a multitenant, 35,000-square-foot office/warehouse building on South Bellview Road for its Rogers headquarters.

In May 2022, the company picked up a multimillion-dollar private equity injection (undisclosed) from the heirs of Little Rock financier Warren Stephens, chairman, president and CEO of Stephens Inc., a privately held investment bank. That led to another acquisition a few months later when Blue Ribbon bought Leisurescapes from Angela Hayward.

Accompanying that growth, Blue Ribbon had diversified to the point that it owned and operated five divisions encompassing ground services (landscaping), trucking, pools, site services and farms.

“After [the Stephens investment], the thinking was to pump the brakes on rapid growth in all different directions and take some time to figure out what we want to be moving forward,” said Blass, Blue Ribbon’s president. “There’s no shortage of opportunities in Northwest Arkansas right now, but it was hard to have enough senior leadership with eyes on everything simultaneously. We’re pulling back, focusing on our core competencies, and expanding into more things later rather than jumping in the deep end all at once.”

As the new CEO, Arnsperger spent his first 90 days assessing Blue Ribbon’s business model and asking some tough questions. He concluded that landscaping is and should be the company’s core operating business.

“Those other things are great opportunities, but we have an opportunity to be pretty special in landscaping,” he said. “Rather than biting off all these pieces, let’s create two distinct areas of focus — grounds services [landscaping and pools] and our site business; earth/site work and our roll off dumpster business.”

Arnsperger oversees the grounds services division, complemented by Hayward, who runs the maintenance business, and Doug Mineart, who worked for Blue Ribbon Lawns for 20 years. He is director of operations for the installation business.

“They know all our customers and our people and they’re both fantastic,” Arnsperger said.

Blass manages the site business. He is also a partner and contributor at Sage Partners, one of the state’s leading commercial real estate developers.

Blue Ribbon totaled a little more than $15 million in revenue last year — all from the landscaping business — but the company remained unprofitable.

“We’re making headway, but we aren’t there yet,” Arnsperger said.

Blue Ribbon’s customer base is about 70% residential and 30% commercial, split roughly 50/50 between installation/new projects and maintenance.

“We do high-end commercial, but we think the growth opportunity is acquiring premium [residential] customers,” Arnsperger said. “People who need the service and want their yards to look good.”

INDUSTRY THREATS
Arnsperger said throttling Blue Ribbon back from the past few years of rapid growth mode goes against his grain. He has the vision to expand Blue Ribbon to other markets outside Northwest Arkansas. But that’s down the road. Right now, quality service and driving productivity are the crucial goals.

“Quality is job No. 1 for us,” he said. “We’re a very low barrier-to-entry market. You can buy a truck and lawnmower today and be my competitor. I would consider north of 100 [companies] in Northwest Arkansas a competitor in this market, and that’s a lot.

“I am not worried about Four Seasons [Landscaping] or Sharum’s or whoever poaching our customers. I’m worried about giving customers a reason to be interested. Our delivery of quality is our biggest threat. We have to deliver the highest quality in the marketplace.”

Arnsperger moved to the region initially to work for Procter & Gamble (2000-2004) more than 20 years ago and has remained plugged into the CPG community ever since.

His experience lies in driving transformational change and growth, capturing new revenue and increasing shareholder value.

His leadership and strategy have contributed to growth in dozens of CPG categories, most recently as the CEO and minority shareholder of Happy Egg Co., a multi-national, free-range egg brand owned by Noble Foods, the largest egg company in the United Kingdom.

The company’s U.S. headquarters is in Rogers. In five years as chief executive (2017-2022), he helped a company with double-digit negative margins become profitable while growing net revenue from about $30 million to over $120 million.

That experience was critical to getting his current job.

“He had a history of playing an integral role with multiple companies in positioning them for the next step of their journey,” Blass said. “With his background, he won over the Stephens [family] members, myself, and my dad [Gus Blass], too.”