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Jon Pritchett, Sports Turf's president and CEO, says "Business is terrific. There is lots of growth throughout the country ... "Local spotlight
Firm exploits opening in synthetic field sales
Rochester company goes national in less than 3 years, takes advantage of a dearth of big players.
General Sports Turf workers install a field at Rochester's Stoney Creek High School. The firm expects $20 million in revenues this year.
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ROCHESTER -- General Sports Turf is riding the growing wave of the popularity of synthetic, multipurpose sports fields in high schools, colleges and mid-sized municipal stadiums.
In the two-and-a-half years since it was founded, the Rochester-based company has tripled its number of employees, expanded nationally and assembled an army of salespeople who work as independent contractors in locations scattered across the country.
General Sports Turf has seen its revenues grow, doubling every year. Jon Pritchett, the company's CEO and one of its 12 private equity investors, says this year's revenues are expected to exceed $20 million.
"Business is terrific," Pritchett said. "There is lots of growth throughout the country, particularly in areas where people are moving. We've got (a contract) in an area in North Carolina where seven high schools are having their turfs replaced."
The company's growth strategy focused on southeast Michigan the first year, the Midwest region the second and this year it has gone national. General Sports Turf now maintains regional offices staffed by independent contractors in Indianapolis, Kansas City, Charlotte, Louisville, San Antonio and McLean, Va.
The company recently completed a project at Florida State University's practice field in Tallahassee. The field will be used for practice by the football team, the marching band and the lacrosse team.
But most of General Sports Turf's growth has not come from high-profile sporting concerns such as professional sports teams or Division I college sports programs like Florida State. Indeed, many of the company's projects have included practice fields for both private and public schools throughout the local region, including Chippewa Valley, Catholic Central in Novi and Brother Rice.
The gold mine, he said, is in the high schools. While there are a limited number of National Football League teams and major league baseball teams, he explained, there are more than 18,000 high schools in the country and with more of them poised to switch from grass to synthetic fields, the sports turf industry could be headed for a boom, Pritchett said.
"We think the biggest trend is multipurpose fields used for multiple sports and then for practice," Pritchett said. "So it has to be durable. In the high school market, land is desired for classrooms. So if you go synthetic, you can get away with having one practice field and one stadium field."
The prospects of a boom is an assessment shared by Mike Squires, vice president of the Stadium Managers Association, an organization whose members include the majority of major baseball league teams, the NFL, several minor league baseball teams, numerous major college programs and some soccer associations.
In a phone interview from his home in West Orange, N.J., Squires said the industry is "doing extremely well."
Squires, who also serves as a consultant to the New York Jets and the New York Giants, said artificial turf started to rise in popularity in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. But for much of the early years the cost -- about $1 million at the time -- of installing these turfs was prohibitive for all but a few wealthy private high schools. Today with prices nearly half what they used to cost and with more parents and high school athletes demanding ultra modern facilities, things are changing rapidly.
Both Pritchett and Squires also agree that business has been buoyed by a dearth of many major players in the industry. Aside from three or four major national players, most of the other companies are small, they said. This creates a void -- and an opportunity -- for companies such as General Sports Turf, Pritchett said.
"You've got some regional players, but there aren't really (many) on the national level," he said.
And for companies such as General Sports Turf that are aggressively growing their business, the future is very bright, Squires said.
"It's not going to stop," he predicts. "There's no end in sight. In the state of New Jersey there are probably 130 or 140 high schools with these fields. I could see that doubling in five years."
Lekan Oguntoyinbo is a Metro Detroit freelance writer.
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