landscape installation

When Berry and Ruthie Edwards founded The Greenery, a landscaping business on Hilton Head Island, SC, they knew they wanted to approach things a little differently. It was 1973 and they had a couple of old pickup trucks and a desire to hire the most experienced and knowledgeable staff they could find. They knew the professionalism the employees brought to the table would make a huge difference in the company’s offerings and image. Nearly three decades later, when Berry Edwards, my father, began his retirement planning, he knew he wanted to approach that differently too. He wanted a business plan in place that would maintain The Greenery’s status of professionalism and customer satisfaction, while rewarding the long-term employees that helped build a successful company. He could have sold the company, trusting the new ownership to maintain the company’s culture, which had endured even as the firm grew from six employees to around 200. Instead, he took a different path, setting up The Greenery as a wholly employee-owned enterprise, utilizing a structure called an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Essentially, the formation of the ESOP allowed the creation of a trust which distributes shares in the company to employees based on factors such as wages and length of employment. Currently, there are approximately 6,700 ESOP businesses nationwide, such as supermarket giant Publix, New Belgium Brewing, and Clif Bar. While that number only accounts for somewhere around .5% of all businesses nationwide, the ESOP model has seen growing support in recent years ...