Article by Dan Shell, Senior Editor, Power Equipment Trade

DENVER, Colorado – Working to provide commercial lawn and garden equipment operators with premium power equipment and top-notch product service and repair at three different locations, owner Saad Bulifa has a great option for customers in central Denver and the south side of town.

Asked how he came to own and operate three lawn and garden dealerships in the greater Denver area, Saad Bulifa says in one way it was easy: “I just bought the competition” when they were looking to exit the industry, he remembers. Both dealership owners approached Bulifa and said they were looking to get out of the industry. This fit well with Bulifa’s constant eye toward expansion.

Bulifa has had a commercial customer focus from his first days of starting his own dealership. A native of Libya who came to the U.S. in 1979 to pursue an engineering degree, Bulifa had taken a job at a lawn and garden dealership in the area.

The business concentrated on homeowner and residential markets for sales. When Bulifa proposed an initiative to pursue more commercial sales, the owners said they weren’t interested in the pro customer opportunity. So Bulifa started his own dealership in 1987, Alamia Outdoor Power Equipment, to target that market. He bought and moved into the current Alamia building in 1990.

Since he bought a second dealership in 2003 and another dealership in 2013, it’s been a decade of integrating the three locations—Alamia Outdoor Power Equipment and Colorado Outdoor Power Equipment (’03) in Denver and Broadway Total Power Equipment (’13) in nearby Englewood, Colorado. The stores are integrated, but not completely. Bulifa prefers to operate each location as its own business with their separate original business names.

Instead of developing an overall brand for the three locations, Bulifa operates each independently, though the facilities have several key things in common: the same major product lines, the same labor rate and a c-Systems business management system that has all three facilities linked digitally and allows each store to search for parts and inventory in the other two locations. Bulifa has run c-Systems for more than 30 years.

In urban Indianapolis, a non-profit is building better kids by giving them repaired lawnmowers that allow them to have the experience of running their own businesses as lawn care contractors. Gary Szymczak founded the non-profit, The Lawnmower Project, which gives kids repaired lawnmowers that he’s fixed. Kids sign a pledge to never give up, to represent the project with respect and to mow at least one yard for free for a needy person.

By Jessica Johnson, Managing Editor, Power Equipment Trade

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following companies submitted editorial profiles to complement their advertisements placed in Power Equipment Trade August 2023.

Archer

Aspen

Curtis Industries

Heftee

Kress Commercial

Masport

Mean Green

Oregon

Pellenc

Rotary

Sunbelt Outdoor Products

Are you diligently selling parts and equipment at your dealership, only to find out that your profits seem unusually low? It’s possible that the problem isn’t how much you’re selling it for. Specifically, outdated price lists might be the hidden culprit impacting your overall profitability.

Article by Cristina Baciu

The move toward more battery-powered lawn and garden equipment continues full throttle as consumers look for more convenience as performance and technology improvements have electric-powered equipment matching gas powered products in many applications.

Article by Dan Shell, Senior Editor, Power Equipment Trade

Readers are encouraged to send in relevant historical lawn and garden media items.

As business owners, most of you are familiar with the typical top to bottom governance structure for a business: Owner, Board of Directors, CEO/Management. I would guess that most of you follow this structure in your business, just like the publicly traded companies. But the difference between your dealership and a publicly traded company is that most dealerships have the same people in all three categories.

Article by Lance Formwalt, leader of the Equipment Dealer Group at Seigfreid Bingham, P.C.