If you’re doing summer correctly, you’ve likely found yourself in a situation where a suburban dad is bragging about how effectively their gutters were cleaned, how perfect their driveway was power washed, how well-manicured their lawn looks or how crystal clear their pool looks (if they’re lucky enough to have one).
Back in the good ol’ days, the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers and Gen-X handled all of these chores themselves, for the most part. But as Millennials find themselves starting to head to suburbia more and more by the year, my generation’s dependency on “expert help” has made the home service industry surge, with outdoor services being no exception.
To showcase just how much of a gold-rush the Millennial generation made the outdoor home services space, today we’re going to look at the number of “service types” actively franchising by era and which I believe are best positioned for long-term viability. One distinction before we get started: there is a MAJOR difference between the service category “existing” and “actively franchising.”
For the most part, local iterations of these services have been happening for far longer than they’ve been franchising. But, entrepreneurs building an operational system and then selling the playbook to ours indicates sector maturity and customer demand far beyond what most small, independent outfits can handle.
From Lawn Care to a Franchise Playbook
Let’s start with our industry pioneers in the 1970s. At first, outdoor home services franchisors were truly reserved for one services: lawn care. Brands like Lawn Doctor, Spring-Green and Weed Man were pioneers; capitalizing on a recurring revenue model, high route density, a repeatable service and low start-up cost to achieve great franchise success at any early stage. By the late 1990s, both holiday lighting and window cleaning came into the chat with Christmas Decor and Fish Window Cleaning, who both used a lot of the principles that made lawn care easy-to-franchise (route-based, small crew, low inventory, low-starting cost, little specialized licensing, etc) to run their playbook for American homeowners.
How the Housing Boom Expanded Outdoor Services
In the following decade, American homeowners started to rely on niche home service providers more than ever. After all, the housing boom (that would later make the economy tank through the mortgage-backed security crisis) changed how Americans thought of their homes. Massive growth in Sun-Belt states like Florida, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia saw people putting in pools more than ever. Average Americans started to invest more heavily in their backyards; giving rise to niche pest control services like mosquito and tick removal. It is no accident than brands like American Swimming Pool Company (ASP) and Mosquito Squad started franchising around this time.
The New Wave of Outdoor Service Franchisors
After the housing crisis, you’d think that the outdoor home services industry would be left for dead. Instead, several factors (emergence of digital marketing, more sophisticated field-service softwares, private equity investment and online reviews) helped national franchise brands with massive infrastructures to become more commonly utilized than independent contractors. Fragmented, highly-skilled or project-based sectors suddenly were being franchised in droves.
Here are some of the industries to emerge within the past 10-12 years:
- Roofing: Mighty Dog Roofing
- Fence installation: Superior Fence & Rail
- Tree removal: Monster Tree Service
- Pavement maintenance: Sam The Concrete Man
- Irrigation: Conserva Irrigation
- Outdoor living design: Archadeck
- Exterior siding: Ideal Siding
- Outdoor lighting: Outdoor Lighting Perspectives
- Artificial turf installation and maintenance: Waterloo Turf
- Power washing: Rolling Suds
- Pool construction: Premier Pools & Spas
- BBQ cleaning: Bar-B-Clean
Which Outdoor Service Categories Have Staying Power?
Now, the important question: which brands do I think have staying power? Personally, I like the thesis this sector of home services was built on. Recurring revenue model, low overhead, little to no specialized training and low start-up cost. Industries like lawn care and specialized pest control are some of this category’s most successful brands for a reason.
My industry to watch that is in its early days: artificial turf installation and maintenance, where Waterloo Turf has gotten a massive head start and is picking up steam fast. Why not take a page out of the lawn care playbook, except manage the synthetic version of it? Sounds like making “what’s old, is new” to me. Rarely a time where that isn’t a winning formula in franchising!
