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Barking up the right tree

| March 6, 2010 8:00 PM

RATHDRUM - The scent of fresh bark, immaculately manicured lawn, fragrant flowers and colorful shrubs, each beautifully accented with bark ... all bring a smile to your face knowing your work is done and family and friends can enjoy its beauty all year.

Alpine Barkblowing & Hydroseeding, located in Rathdrum, can help fulfill this dream. They provide installation of bark, mulch and soil as well as hydroseeding. Owners John Sanders, Todd Lutz and Frank Cysewski believe in building lifelong relationships and have made it their mission to beautify "our community" one "yard" at a time.

Barkblowing is the quickest, most cost effective application of bark. Alpine Barkblowing & Hydroseeding use state of the art equipment and environmentally friendly products. With greater demand and a shorter supply of bark products they developed a premium wood fiber mulch which is all natural (no added color). This product has all of the benefits of bark mulch and more, including greater moisture and color retention, while maintaining an affordable product. The bark is applied using hoses that can reach 300 feet, so limited accessibility and concern of damage to lawn or plants from heavy equipment does not exist. The final step is a professional clean up.

"We are capable of doing a two-yard job or a 2,000 yard job, from Grandma's backyard to the entire community of Fairchild Air Force Base," Todd said. "There is no job too large or small. We also supply and deliver bark and mulch to landscape suppliers."

Todd and Frank are native Idahoans and John returned to Idaho 20 years ago after two generations in northern California.

"I guess we prove Idahoans and Californians really can get along." Todd said. They have been in business since 2000 and have 10 employees.

"Without the efforts of the coaches and staff at the Idaho SBDC our company more than likely would not be here today," Todd said. "We experienced pretty much everything a business could experience in a year; the economy went in the tank, fuel prices skyrocketed and a stressful and expensive buyout of a previous associate. Our business was in serious jeopardy and we realized that we needed to dig ourselves out. We decided to attend the five-week business workshops. We knew immediately we had made the right decision as the instructors were incredible and the knowledge we gained was unparalleled to anything we had ever experienced. After the classes, we began meeting regularly with our coach, Frank Bendinelli. His experience and expertise pushed us to a place we had never been and we began to grow.

Today we are knowledgeable and confident business owners with an absolute sense of direction. In 2009 we made a huge rebound, in a year that was supposed to be down due to the economy, we were able to break our all-time record for sales and profits. Our plans call for significant growth in the future which will help us give back to our community by creating jobs and hopefully inspiring other small business owners to do what we did."

For more information call: (208) 772-8552 or by e-mail alpine@intermaxnetworks.com.

Idaho SBDC at the North Idaho College exists to help businesses thrive and grow by providing no-cost business coaching, high-impact business training and free resources to business leaders. For more information call (208) 666-8009 or visit www.IdahoSBDC.org.