There are times in his 12-hour workdays when Howard K. Freilich looks about with disbelief at the business he has built over three decades. What began as a one-man enterprise run from a newlyweds”™ apartment in White Plains has grown into a company with about 200 employees in Mamaroneck and Manhattan and more than $10 million in annual sales.
His company, like his marriage, has lasted and thrived. Its list of clients past and present reads like a Who”™s Who of corporate metropolitan New York and its hospitality and tourism industry: Heineken USA. MasterCard. Mack-Cali Realty. The Shops at Columbus Circle. Paramus Park Mall. Bloomingdale”™s. Westchester Marriott. South Street Seaport. The New York Botanical Garden. The Waldorf-Astoria. The Plaza. The Pierre. The Ritz-Carlton New York. At many office park entrances and inside corporate offices on the Platinum Mile along I-287, his company”™s horticultural displays and handiwork also can be seen.
“I came a long way,” Freilich said recently. “It amazes me sometimes.”
Wearing his usual CEO uniform of blue jeans and black long-sleeved T-shirt, he sat on an antique couch in his spacious photo-and-plant-filled office with exposed red brick walls and roof beams and hanging heating ducts that show a designer”™s minimalist touch. His office is the last in a curving row of second-floor offices ”“ all with uniquely old doors collected by Freilich in his urban and rural roaming ”“ in a 40,000-square-foot, 120-year-old factory on Mamaroneck”™s Fayette Avenue frequented by workers”™ kids and dogs.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” Freilich said modestly of his business success. He has grown with that place ”“ commercial Westchester County ”“ and its real estate and professional firms, many of which remain his clients after 29 years in business. And his commercial interior landscaping company has expanded and branched out and so survived changing times.
Freilich is 52 and still has the crown of blonde hair, though admittedly thinner now, that inspired his company”™s name: Blondie”™s Treehouse Inc. From the start, he knew the value in branding, long before ever more brand-conscious corporate clients such as Hyatt Corp. and Bloomingdale”™s hired his firm to give their hotels and stores a national “landscape identity.” The company”™s catchy name, he said, set him apart in a crowded horticulture market in which “everyone else had ”˜foliage”™ in their name.”
Freilich seems always to have been driven by an entrepreneurial spirit. At 9, he and a pal ran a shoeshine stand at a train station in their native Queens. At 12, he was selling beads in the borough. At 13, he bought clothing seconds from friends of his parents in New York”™s garment district and sold them on a neighborhood street corner. As an impecunious though enterprising student of agricultural resource economics at the University of Maryland, he sold his food stamps at discount to fellow collegians and used the proceeds to keep him in beer.
Freilich”™s current business, which has allowed him to keep a home and raise a family in Armonk, also began on the streets. “I started in ”™79 selling plants on a street corner in Queens and Westchester,” he said. Buying product in Manhattan”™s flower district, he worked weekends at two locations. During the week, he did evening plant parties in suburban homes “similar to Tupperware” parties, he said. His hostesses got a free plant for every 10 that Freilich sold.
Freilich soon saw broader opportunity in 1970s Westchester and its growing commercial real estate market. “Days, I just started going to corporate America, knocking on their doors. The late ”™70s were when (real estate developers) Lowell Schulman and Robert Martin were building up Westchester. They were the big players in Westchester. In ”™79, they just started developing the corporate parks along Westchester Avenue.”
Competing developers, looking for an edge to attract tenants, were willing to invest money to spruce up their lobbies. A one-man interior landscaping operation, the blonde Jewish kid from Queens could supply their needs.
“I would use Monday as my sales day,” said Freilich, who continues to run his company”™s 11-person sales department based in Manhattan. With a client”™s deposit in hand, he drove his car to the 28th Street flower district to purchase plants that he kept overnight in his apartment. “Tuesday was my installation day,” he said. “Wednesday was my maintenance day.”
As tenants moved into those buildings, “They would end up using us for their interior plants,” he said. “We have clients who have been with us since we started. As they”™ve grown, we”™ve grown with them.”
A one-man law firm might pay $100 a month for plant maintenance, he said. “You take $100 a month times 30 years and that”™s a lot of dollars.” Some of those early clients have grown to 60-lawyer firms with 200,000-square-foot offices. “Instead of paying $100 a month, they now pay $1,500 a month,” he said.
In the tri-state area, “We serve 1,000 accounts on a weekly basis,” Freilich said. “Our fees range from $100 a month to thousands of dollars a month. We service from 10 plants to 50,000 plants.”
“We put out about 12 trucks a day,” he said. “We”™re a seven-days-a-week, 24-hours-a-day business. Our floral department is doing installations when everyone else is sleeping.”
Blondie”™s Treehouse no longer depends on the Manhattan flower market. Freilich travels internationally to visit trade shows, buy products and cultivate relationships with contract growers. The company buys 95 percent of its plants and artificial display products directly from growers and manufacturers, including suppliers in China.
“On any given day, we”™re getting shipments from Israel, South America, Africa, Holland, Hawaii, Florida, Connecticut, Long Island,” Freilich said. “By eliminating the middleman, we keep our costs competitive, yet the product is as fresh as it can be.”
As it did in the recessionary ”™90s, when clients and competing companies went out of business, Blondie”™s Treehouse is weathering the current downturn in the economy and shifting interior design trends. “The interior landscape market is really shrinking,” Freilich said. “Clients are spending less and less.” Smaller companies increasingly opt to maintain plants on their own as a cost-cutting measure. And as minimalist design in offices has supplanted the massive floral displays of the ”™70s, demand has further wilted.
The company has branched out into leased holiday displays, outdoor urban landscaping and seasonal flowering plants. “I think we”™re positioned so that we’re not going to be as hard hit as companies that just do interior landscaping,” Freilich said.
“Christmas is about 20 percent of our business and growing,” he said. The company”™s Christmas department has five full-time staff in addition to seasonal employees. Its creative team has developed a “holiday-in-a-box” display designed for companies with multiple locations.
Especially in Manhattan, Blondie”™s Treehouse has turned to exterior landscaping for an urban environment, designing and building terraces and arbors for corporate clients. “We”™ve done that with a lot of law firms and large hedge fund firms,” Freilich said. “Some of them can run into hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“We probably serve more hotels in New York City than any other company. The New York hospitality industry is still strong ”“ knock on wood ”“ because of the European dollar.”
“So our business is growing,” he said. “What”™s really fueled our growth is we”™ve purchased 10 of our competitors over the last 20 years.”
With the “green building” movement, Freilich has found new fertile ground for his enterprise. “We”™re one of the key companies doing green roofing systems, sustainable roofs,” he said. “We just did a huge one for the Botanical Garden.”
In Mamaroneck, the company is building a 6,000-square-foot green roof garden for a client”™s apartment building. “It”™s really taking the concept from Manhattan into Westchester,” Freilich said. “In Westchester, with all the high-end residential buildings going in, everybody”™s competing with one another.”
That has Freilich seeing green. Once again, he”™s in the right place at the right time.
“I still have as much fun as I did the day I started,” he said. “I”™m a kid at heart. I like to play in the dirt.”
