Walk into Garden Works in Ocala, FL, and you’ll find gardening tools everywhere.

Pruning shears, garden benches, gloves, and shelves full of inventory.

But if that’s all you see, you’re missing the most valuable assets in this 33-year-old business: thousands of retailer relationships, supplier partnerships, distribution channels, operational systems, and customer trust.

Those assets are why the business matters.

When I visited Garden Works, I was looking at infrastructure – not just gardening tools.

That’s exactly what attracted Gabe and Sunshine Chapman to the business in the first place. After building and exiting a successful technology company together, they acquired Garden Works and began using it as a platform for growth.

 

 

What they’ve built since is one of the clearest real-world examples of platform thinking I’ve seen, and this is exactly why I’ve always been drawn to platform companies.

 

What Makes a Platform Company?

One of the biggest mistakes first-time buyers make is evaluating businesses based on the products they sell. They become fixated on industries. They ask whether they want to own a landscaping company, a plumbing company, a distribution company, or a gardening products company.

The question I’m usually asking is different: Does this business provide a platform for future growth?

In the acquisition entrepreneurship matrix, I’ve always favored platform companies because they offer one of the best combinations of downside protection and upside potential. The business already works. Customers already exist. Revenue is already flowing. The infrastructure is already in place.

 

 

When I talk about platform companies, I’m not referring to the private equity definition. I’m talking about businesses that provide a foundation for an entrepreneur’s skills, experience, and ambitions.

A platform company gives you leverage. It has enough infrastructure that your effort compounds rather than starts from zero. Customers are already buying. Suppliers are already delivering. Employees already know how to do the work. The market already recognizes the brand. The cash flow already exists.

That’s why I was so interested in Garden Works. Most visitors would walk through the warehouse and see gardening tools, but I saw 6,000 retail relationships, supplier partnerships, distribution channels, operational systems, and decades of customer trust. Those are the assets that create future opportunities.

 

Products Change. Infrastructure Compounds.

One reason buyers get distracted by products is because they’re visible. You can walk through a warehouse and see inventory. You can hold a gardening tool in your hand. You can browse a product catalog and quickly understand what the company sells.

Infrastructure is harder to see, yet it’s often the most valuable asset in the business.

Garden Works sells through roughly 6,000 independent garden centers, hardware stores, and gift shops across the country. Those relationships weren’t built overnight. They were built over decades. The supplier relationships took decades. The reputation took decades. The trust took decades.

 

 

That’s the part of the business a competitor can’t easily replicate. A product can be copied. A relationship network built over thirty years cannot.

Infrastructure creates optionality. A customer relationship can support new products. A distribution network can support additional brands. A trusted reputation can support entirely new categories. The more infrastructure a company has, the more ways an operator can create value. That’s why I spend less time thinking about what a business sells today and more time thinking about what its infrastructure could support tomorrow.

 

How the Chapmans Expanded the Platform

The most interesting thing about Garden Works isn’t what the company was when they bought it. It’s what they’ve done with it since.

Sunshine focused on product development and merchandising. She found ways to improve existing products and introduce new ones that fit naturally into channels the company already served. New apron designs, new accessories, and new offerings could be introduced without having to build a new customer base from scratch.

Gabe focused on systems and visibility. When they acquired the business, much of the company’s information lived in spreadsheets, paper records, and disconnected systems. He began building dashboards and using technology to gain better visibility into inventory, purchasing decisions, margins, and distributor performance. One of the discoveries was that a significant portion of distributor relationships were not contributing profit the way they expected. That insight created opportunities to improve decision-making throughout the company.

 

 

What’s important is that neither of these initiatives required reinventing the business. They leveraged infrastructure that already existed.

The same pattern shows up in customer growth. Many entrepreneurs assume growth requires finding entirely new customers. Sometimes it does, but oftentimes it doesn’t. Garden Works already had thousands of retail relationships. Expanding product offerings, introducing private-label opportunities, and deepening existing partnerships became possible because the customer infrastructure was already there.

That’s one of the defining characteristics of a platform company. The same foundation can support multiple growth initiatives simultaneously.

 

The Platform Mindset

The clearest example of platform thinking came through another acquisition.

The Chapmans acquired Vinrella, a company known for umbrellas that store inside bottle-shaped containers. At first glance, umbrellas seem unrelated to gardening products.

 

Vinrella products displayed in a retail store in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

A product-focused buyer might struggle to understand the connection. A platform-focused buyer sees something different.

Garden products tend to perform best during one part of the year. Vinrella’s strongest season occurs during another. Together, they help create a more balanced revenue profile across the calendar. More importantly, the acquisition expanded what the platform could support.

That’s the mindset I encourage buyers to develop. When evaluating a business, look beyond the current product catalog.

• How strong are the customer relationships?
• How difficult would it be to replicate the distribution network?
• What new products could flow through the same channels?
• What acquisitions could strengthen the platform?
• What opportunities become available after the acquisition that weren’t available before?

Those questions often reveal far more about a company’s future value than the products currently sitting on the shelf.

 

The Real Asset

Traditional entrepreneurs start with an idea and spend years building infrastructure around it. Acquisition entrepreneurs start with infrastructure and then decide what to build.

That’s the power of platform companies.

When Gabe and Sunshine bought Garden Works, they acquired a gardening products company. They also acquired decades of customer relationships, supplier partnerships, distribution capability, operational systems, and market trust.

The gardening tools happened to be the visible part, but the infrastructure was the real asset.

Products tell you what a company does today. Infrastructure tells you how that company can create value tomorrow.

And when you’re evaluating a platform company, tomorrow is where much of the opportunity lives.

Ready to acquire a business in the next 12 months? The Acquisition Lab is your first stop. Reach out to us today and get on the fast track to becoming an acquisition entrepreneur.