When Ridgefield resident John Carlson first started his home farming company Homefront Farmers, the responses he received in his first two years of business were a mix of intrigue and disbelief.
“”˜Is that really a thing?”™” Carlson said people would ask him. “”˜People really hire somebody to help them with their vegetable garden?”™”
Carlson said he figured if people hire companies to care for their lawns and bushes, why not someone to design, build and maintain their vegetable gardens.
“It just seemed like there was an opportunity for a company to be focused on that and specialize in it to help people. There was also a strong belief that there are a lot of people interested in this kind of thing now. People interested in organic, in getting back to the basics of growing their own food, but really had no knowledge of how to go about doing it and certainly no knowledge of how to do it efficiently.”
Carlson said many of his clients are people who had some experience with gardening and farming growing up, but have since lost the connection and want to get back into it whether it be to provide clean food for their family or as a recreational hobby.
“I just had someone write me an email saying they grew up in Rhode Island and their parents and grandparents always had a garden and they loved having it, but they wish they had paid attention because now they want to have it for their kids, but they don”™t know what to do,” he said. “That is a very typical intro we get from people.”
With an initial startup cost of $100,000Â the company has more than tripled in revenue in five years of operation, having expanded from an initial area of operation in Fairfield County to include Litchfield County and Westchester County.
Carlson effectively got in on the ground floor of a budding industry and has now largely cornered the market in the region. “So far there is not a lot of competition,” he said.
The lack of competitors has been both a blessing and challenge as he has spent a good amount of time “evangelizing” consumers to the idea of producing organic food on their properties, he said. He has capitalized on the wave of interest in organic and locally sourced food with his company’s revenue increasing by 300 percent in its first year and maintaining annual growth between 20 and 30 percent.
Carlson said the company’s early success was helped by his forgoing of a salary for his first three years in business, funding himself on earnings collected over a 25 year-long marketing and consulting career including 15 years with the firm Cannondale Associates, later known as Kantar Retail.
“You have to have a fair amount of money to survive in Fairfield County without a paycheck,” he said.
With the company’s roots firmly planted, Carlson said he has set his sights on growing his business to five times its current size. “I think there is a market out there to be significantly bigger and I would certainly like to do it before someone else does,” he said.
Employing a seasonally fluctuating staff of 20, Carlson has grown his business by a model he likens to the strategy of electric car manufacturer Tesla ”” starting at the high end of the market and working his way down.
Beginning with gardens as large as 1,600 square feet, or 40 feet squared, and ranging in price from $5,000 up to $12,000 to design and build, Carlson recently opened a new facet of his business to including gardens as small as 10 by 16 square feet and ranging in price from $3,000 to 6,000.
In addition to building the gardens, Homefront offers year-round maintenance and hands-on education for its clients at an additional cost. The company tailors their service according to whether a client wants the company to simply set up a garden or to fully service it from seed to harvest.
“Part of that is we need to be willing to say to people who are interested in doing it themselves, we will put ourselves out of business with you, but we know you”™ll spread the word to other people and there will be more business out there,” he said. “It”™s a little bit of planned obsolescence, but it is part of the life cycle of the clients.”
Carlson said he serves about 120 clients on a continual basis with about 50 to 60 new garden projects per year, 70 percent of which retain the company”™s maintenance services.
Currently the company specializes in produce, helping clients grow anything from standard garden crops like leafy greens, tomatoes and carrots to fruit trees as common as native apple and pawpaws as well as berries ranging from raspberry and blueberry to more exotic selections such as gooseberry and goji.
The company will even tap homeowners”™ own maple trees, boil the sap in their own sugar shack and return hand-crafted Connecticut maple syrup.
Homefront also builds and maintains beehives to produce local honey but has yet to incorporate livestock like chickens and rabbits, which Carlson said are on the horizon. “We could get into sheep and goats, but the market and interest is smaller,” he said.
Looking ahead, Carlson plans to incrementally expand his business, possibly through franchising, to reach farther north along Connecticut shoreline into New Haven County and other adjacent counties.
The company also recently purchased 11.5 acres in Redding to establish a base of operations to source produce internally in addition to their network of local farmers with whom Carlson partners, including The Hickories Farm in Ridgefield and Gilbertie”™s Wholesale in Easton.
A marketing consultant for more than two decades, Carlson said reconnecting with a tradition largely lost in today”™s society has been a welcome sea change in his life.
“I spent a lot of years in a business where our only mission was to make money in the consulting firms I worked for,” he said. “It is rewarding financially, but it”™s not very rewarding in other ways. I was determined in this business to have some meaning beyond just achieving business success.”
