Owner of Kingsbury Lawn Care, Jack Chapman was invited onto BBC Radio 4’s ‘Broadcasting House’ Programme last week (12/6/22) to comment on the cost of doing business crisis. You can listen from 13.20 to get straight into it with the small business owners.
With a great deal of focus being placed in the media on the rising cost of living, arguably not enough of a spotlight in comparison has been shone on the increasing costs to do business. The lack of an energy price cap is hurting many small businesses, along with a lack of alternative options when it comes to suppliers and transport costs, not to mention a challenging labour market.
The cost of doing business crisis was flagged by the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) where in April, the ONS reported that input price inflation for businesses had surpassed 19% – suggesting that business owners are taking the hit directly with impacts on profits (and therefore tax revenues), scaling back on investment and expansion as confidence decreases.
Kingsbury Lawn Care are proud with how we have reacted to the latest shift to the landscape. Both fertiliser and fuel prices have increased by 40% in the last 18 months – two products that can’t be moved away from to deliver our service. With the cost of living, increasing salaries for our award winning team is a must to retain and hire the quality needed to continue to defy a stagnant overall economic situation and continue with our growth.
Pricing for customers has needed to increase and will need to do so further across 2022 and 2023. However, the value of our service to customers has lead to us being able to do this with a cancelation rate only 3% higher than pre-pandemic. This can’t be taken for granted with no stability to cost pressures in sight at this stage.
Despite this, the business continues to thrive since recently attending the FSB Awards Finals as a UK Finalist of ‘Micro Business of the Year’. The judges were looking for sustainable growth over the past two years and we are confident that despite the latest global crisis our business model is very ‘recession proof’ and we can continue to press on as a company and go one step further in the future. Since the start of the year, an additional 160 homeowners (net) have realised the benefits of our services to engage us on an ongoing basis.
We are recruiting at the moment seeking our next superstar lawn care technician! If there is anyone that you know, that we should know, please feel free to send them to our Indeed page.
