Trending Services in the Green Industry
After the rough year of 2020, we are ready for good news and normalcy. According to the Irrigation and Green Industry (IGIN) survey taken in last fall, 88% of us expect moderate or significant growth in 2021. Contractors expect to see a continued benefit of clients that invested in improving their home and yards. Many contractors are grateful that their business survived, are hopeful to find better crews in this year and look forward to a more stable economy.
Over the past year, many contractors have taken a good look at what their business needs to develop, and that includes services. Respondents were asked about a list of services they provide, want to provide, or want to stop providing. Here we discuss the results, what is trending in irrigation, lighting, water features and drainage, why those trends are happening and help you take advantage of the trends that can improve your bottom line.
Strong Trends for Irrigation Installation and Maintenance
IGIN’s survey showed that 28% of respondents want to add irrigation installation, and 8% want to drop, for a net increase of 20%. For irrigation maintenance, the net increase shows 15%. Even though IGIN’s member base contains a higher percentage of irrigation contractors than landscapers as a whole, it is a trending increase.
A net increase of 20% for irrigation installations points at a continued reversal. More contractors want to add irrigation services and it appears that the trend of subbing out irrigation services has reversed. From listening to our contractors, they want to have better quality and timing control over the irrigation work on their projects. Contractors also desire to harvest the profit for such work for themselves. Another factor that may play a role is age. Older irrigation contractors are aging out or slowing down, thus creating bottle necks for landscapers to get irrigation work done. Gen-Xers and Millennials do not want to depend on a shrinking population of Boomer irrigation providers and decide to take control of irrigation themselves.
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Landscape Lighting is Still Trending Strong
Before LED lighting product became mainstream, few landscapers wanted to mess with the technical pitfalls of landscape lighting. LED had made it much easier to install landscape lighting, and over the years the percentage of landscapers installing lighting has grown from 3% in 2005 to over 40% in 2020. The survey shows that 22% want to add lighting services and we can expect that homeowner demand for lighting will grow the landscape lighting trend for at least a few more years.
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Ponds are Down but Water Features are Trending Up
Water Feature services have seen many recent changes. Full-out ponds are declining because pond cost and care turned off many homeowners, and as a result, contractors as well, and therefore there is a minor net decrease (-3%) in contractor services.
However, homeowners like the idea of water even if they don’t like the idea of maintaining it. Adding pond-less water features with easy install and maintenance are the answer. Pond-less waterways and falls are already becoming more popular. The growth in water features trend seems to be in smaller pond-less features built into patio, outdoor living areas, and entry ways.
We expect that more landscapers will venture into water features. Pond-less features provide a great way to enter the water feature business, because they are simpler to install and maintain.
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Drainage is Trending
More contractors want to add drainage to their services (net increase +6%) Almost every landscape needs drainage work. Ponding water can be devastating for structures, damaging to plants, and is an ugly nuisance. Only 52% of respondents said that they currently provide drainage services, however, we expect that number is higher. Landscapers likely already provide drainage work but do not consider it a separate service.
It is worth noting that recent product innovations that make drainage installation much easier, and with training contractors can easily offer this service to their clients. Adding drainage work into a landscape or irrigation job is easy if contractors point out drainage issues to a homeowner.
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Visit IGIN to download the survey.
