BIG SPLASH WATER GARDENS

Backyard pond biz flows to $60 million in water gardens a year!

By Vicki Gerson

The number one responsibility for Greg Wittstock in running his pond business is to guide and guard the company culture. The other three areas of concern are setting the vision for the organization, sharing the passion of water gardening, and developing strong bonds with colleagues and customers. It's an amazing startup story.

Who could imagine that from building backyard ponds to house his pet turtles Greg Wittstock, The Pond Guy™, would create a business that will bring in more than $60 million in sales this year. Today, Aquascape, Inc. headquartered in St.Charles, Illinois, is the nation’s largest water garden designer and supplier for water gardens and ponds.

Aquascape designs and sells its water garden eco-systems, including its proprietary pond skimmer and bio-fall to distributors who, in turn, sell the products to contractors and garden centers. The water gardens use no chemical additives and are “in balance with Mother Nature,” Wittstock says.

When neighbors and relatives—and even the UPS driver—would see the pond at his parents’ house, they’d remark on how beautiful it was. This gave Wittstock the idea that maybe he could build ponds for other people and make money. His first step into the business world was to visit his local stone supplier and leave his newly-Kinko-printed business cards at the front desk as well as attach a letter with a photo of his pond to their bulletin board. He sold his first two ponds that way, and that first summer sold five ponds. Wittstock had $21,000 in sales, resulting in a profit of $11,000.

The first pond, a retrofit to an existing pond, was sold at $1,200—which resulted in a $900 profit. Wittstock’s filtration system, which was made out of garbage cans and cattle troughs, was added to this pond, as was a decorative waterfall. “Except for using some members of the high school football team I’d gone to school with to move some rocks, I did everything myself. It took me a week to build each pond.”

Wittstock didn’t need any financing because he sold a job, got a deposit and paid for the materials. Best of all, he used a trailer for hauling supplies that he found with a “free” sign at the side of the road. Attaching it to the family station wagon, it was fine for hauling materials.

For the first two years, Aquascape’s headquarters was his parents’ home. In 1992 he got a break. The Chicago Tribune ran an article about his business, and he got 82 pond sales from the article. His father decided to join the business, and Wittstock hired a full-time foreman and office manager.

That same year, contractors subcontracted him to build ponds for their customers. The problem was all of his filtration systems were homemade, so he decided to have them manufactured to his specs and filed for a patent in 1993. He worked with CAD designers and took samples to a manufacturer.

“This was a new methodology for building ponds,” he says. “Our filter system was part of the pond versus being separated from the pond. Our external filtration system was actually a waterfall.” Before Wittstock’s system, the pumps were placed in the bottom of the pond and external boxes with pipes connected to them.

After talking with a family friend who was a consultant, Wittstock thought the fastest way to build his business was through franchising. He spent all of his 1993 profits in 1994 in developing a franchise system working with a major franchise company. He tried to sell this concept to landscape contractors. “It failed miserably.”

Six months later he decided that if he couldn’t sell franchises, he would give away all the information and let people buy the product. In 1995, he rented 26,000 names of landscape contractors and sent them catalogs with information about his products. More catalogs were being mailed each year as he rented more lists and attended trade shows till he had three and one-half million catalogs being mailed out each year.

In 1996, Wittstock ran into his second obstacle. After serious disagreements on how the business should be run, Wittstock’s dad left the business and became his competitor. The banks didn’t like family fights and called in all the bank loans. The bank loans were in the corporation’s name, but they were 50-50 partners. However, Wittstock was the president so he retained ownership equity and had the voting shares. So Wittstock could cover the salaries of his employees and make payments on the vehicles, he borrowed $50,000 from his grandmother and his mom wrote a few checks to keep the business functioning. (In March 2007, he and his father were reunited. He bought his father’s business and he’s now working for him.)

Wittstock was seeing an answer on how to grow his business nationwide. He decided that distributors were the answer. He set up his first distributorship in Colorado, and the distributor sold to landscape contractors directly. This was a retooling of his business again, and he phased out direct sales to contractors. At the same time, Wittstock also established Aquascape University to teach and train contractors on how to use the products. The company holds a large trade-training bash every July called Pondamoniam.

In 2005, Wittstock’s dream of a workplace utopia came true when he moved to Aqualand, a 256,000-square-foot office and warehouse facility that boasts the largest sloping green roof in North America. This year, Wittstock changed the name of his company and issued a new logo from Aquascape Designs, Inc. to Aquascape, Inc.

Aquascape, Inc. is located at 901 Aqualand Way, St. Charles, IL 60174. The phone is 630/659-2000. •

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