VIRGINIA TURFGRASS JOURNAL

The Turf Zone: Welcome to The Turf Zone. In this episode of Virginia Turfgrass, we’re talking to Kurt Fellenstein of Trinity Turf. Kurt, how are you?

Kurt Fellenstein: Good morning, I’m well, how are you? 

TTZ: Fantastic, thank you for finding a few minutes to chat with me. I know it’s a busy time of year, so we’ll just jump right in and get to the good stuff. First, tell me about Trinity Turf and what the company does and what you do. 

KF: Sure, Trinity Turf, we’re a wholesale distributor, I would call us a regional distributor. Full-service, full line of anything for turf. So grass seed, fertilizer, pesticides, erosion control, pretty much if it goes on the grass, we sell it. We just don’t sell sod, which sometimes people confuse us for a sod company, if you look at TrinityTurf.com you go to Texas to a sod company, but TrinityTurf.net is us, we’re based in Virginia and we’re the regional distributor. As far as my role goes, I’m the Founder of the company. We started in 2004, I took on a few partners pretty much immediately after starting, so they were active for a while. I actually have one partner that is still active, along with my wife, she works day to day doing all of our accounting for us. We’ve been doing this since 2004 and been loving it ever since. 

TTZ: What was your path to get to that point? What did you do before founding the company? 

KF: I began my career with Wetzel Seed Company, that was a well-known name a number of years ago. Wetzel Seed has been bought and sold several times and the name has kind of gone by the wayside, and I worked under Bob Wetzel when I worked there. I enjoyed my time there but there was another opportunity that I left for and that company was a family-owned company and they were trying to do a Southern expansion, they were based out of New England. About six months into that, I told my wife, “It’s really great working for this company, they’re a family-owned company, and I like that. But if something ever happened, I just don’t think I could go to work for somebody else. I just think I’d do it on my own.” Lo and behold, about six months later, they came to me and said, “Things just aren’t working out with our expansion, we’re going to have to retract back up into New England. But we found some other company to take you over.” I was like, “Thanks, but no thanks, I’ll do this myself.” I was really fortunate that I had built a loyal customer base. And I felt like they were buying from me more so than the company, and I felt like the majority of them would follow me no matter what I did. Thankfully that was the case, so I had a really loyal group of customers that said, “If you’re going to do this on your own, we’ll back you.” That was how things got started. Just getting started back in 2004, I just had the corner of a warehouse for this other company. I kept a pallet or two pallets worth of stuff in that little corner. Then over the years it’s grown. Our main facility is in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, we’re in Weyers Cave, we have about 20,000 square feet of warehouse there, and then also in Richmond, VA we opened up a location several years ago and we have about 24,000 square feet of warehouse there. And currently we have about 22 employees. Things have grown quite a bit over the last 18 or so years. 

TTZ: It sounds like starting out and being more in an account manager/sales role obviously worked really well for you, so when you started Trinity Turf, did you carry that over or did you have to immediately shift into more of an administrative role and a management role? What’s the balance of that for you now? 

KF: When I first started, we were very lean as a company so I did it all, but mainly I was still a sales person when we got started. I kind of stayed in that role for many years. I would say probably after about out tenth year in business, things started to really change a lot and our infrastructure was starting to mature at that point. It was probably around that time where I had to make a decision because I couldn’t still do it all. We’d grown to a point where that wasn’t possible, so probably the thing I loved the most was being out on the road in a sales position but I couldn’t do that and still run the business. So we started to hire more people in a support role, we had hired some sales people at that point, so I just had to transition more into I would call my position now as more like a general manager. Technically I guess I’m the CEO of the company, but I’m not big on labels. I just feel like whatever needs to get done, that’s what I do. So there’s still times today where I’ll hop in a delivery truck and go make deliveries because we’re short-handed and our customers need their products, so I’ll do that. I do most of the purchasing, although I have hired some help on the purchasing side of things. So I’ve got somebody who does our day-to-day purchasing and I just look at the bigger picture. It’s kind of transformed itself over the years into that role. So I used to spend five days a week behind the wheel, going from customer to customer and now I basically spend five days a weeks sitting behind a computer every day.

TTZ: It’s a different view, for sure. I’m interested because I have a lot of interest right now in the magazines that I work for, they’re all turfgrass or green industry related, and we’re all talking about something you just touched on with labor being shore handed, supply chain and prices changing, and I’m always interested from your perspective in the industry, how does that look from your side? How are your customers handling that and how are you communicating with them about your area of that world? 

KF: Well, my initial reaction to that question would be that I don’t think there’s enough time to answer this truthfully or cover it adequately. Things have definitely changed. For us, there really isn’t anything that we haven’t been able to get, I know there are some industries that are having trouble just getting products. We’ve really not had an issue getting products, obviously prices have changed quite a bit. There’s a lot of instability in the fertilizer market, transportation costs are crazy right now. We’re having to look so much further ahead right now. So it used to be we could, in a lot of cases, we would have just-in-time inventory. If you ordered something today and I didn’t have it, I could get it tomorrow. Within two or three days you would whatever it was that you ordered. It’s not really like that these days, so we’re carrying heavier inventory levels. Because I used to look 6-8 weeks out, now I’m looking 6-8 months out. And some cases, we’re trying to look a year ahead on certain products. Just trying to communicate that, we do that through our sales people mainly. We want our sales people to have the relationship with the customer and then be able to sit down with them and say, “this is what’s happening in the market, and for the good of both of us, we need to start looking a lot further ahead than what we used to.” That’s been our biggest thing, just having to look further ahead. 

TTZ: I know you’re wearing a lot of hats, and I know you’re the owner and manager of the company, I know you have to do all of the things, and if it needs to be done, it just has to get done, of course the best managers are the ones who step up and do that. Since you get to do all of those parts, what’s your favorite, what’s the best part of your job? 

KF: That actually is a little bit of a hard question to answer. A lot of that may depend on the day. We’re doing this interview on a Thursday, but it almost feels like a Monday to me based on how the morning has gone. But I will say this, interacting with customers is probably the thing I miss the most. I’m not out there on a regular basis and some of the customers that we have today, we’ve had them all 18 years. I do feel bad that I can’t be out there interacting with them on a regular basis, so that’s what pains me the most. To tell you what I would enjoy doing the most, a lot of days that would be, I’m going to hop behind the wheel of a truck and I’m going to go make deliveries. I’m going to turn the phone off, because it’s nice and quiet and all that, I need to focus on the road, and really by doing that, it does give me the opportunity to interact with some of the customers as well. When I make those deliveries, I get a chance to at least have a five or ten minute chat with whoever is there receiving that delivery. I like to do physical activity as well, so that encompasses a little bit of that as we’re unloading product off the truck, so I would say that’s probably favorite thing.

TTZ: Tell me about being part of industry organizations and does that membership and being involved help you connect with your customers also, does that contribute to that part of your business? 

KF: I would say sure. And I’m a big proponent of value, and so I’m going to spend our time and our money on things that I perceive to be a good value. And the Turfgrass Council has been a tremendous asset to the industry over many many years. With everything that they do, Tom does an excellent job as the director. At the different shows that they’ve put on, at the pesticide recertifications, all of those type of things are things that we perceive to be high value. And it does, it gives us a chance to interact with customers, as much as possible, we try to make it to all of those events for that reason. And as far as our support, I think probably even at the beginning, I think we tried to support the Turfgrass Council, but certainly the last 15 years plus, we’ve been supporters of the Turfgrass Council.   

TTZ: What is a lesson you’ve learned the hard way in your career?

KF: The thing that jumps to my mind is just learning to be humble. My personality type is pretty high-strung, trudge forward, don’t tell me I can’t do something because I will do it. I bought product out of spite one time, and I spent about $10,000 buying a whole pallet of this one particular product because this guy told me that I couldn’t buy it. And I said, “I WILL buy it.” Now, I had to buy a whole pallet, and it probably took me five years to get rid of that product. Sometimes just being humble, you can be humbled by some of the decisions that you make. But I also live my life by – life is a series of decisions, and we all get to make decisions, and every decision that we make comes with a consequence. So some of those consequences are good and some of them are bad. A lot of the decisions that I’ve made over the years, the consequences have been great, that was one instance, that was probably a bad decision and I kind of learned the hard way – maybe just sit back a little bit and think about it a little bit more before you make a knee-jerk reaction. So that was one that I learned the hard way.

TTZ: I think there’s some version of that for all of us. Do you have any mentors who helped lead the path for you and get you focused on your direction in your career?

KF: Yes, and I may answer this two ways. I threw out a name when we first got started, Bob Wetzel. Bob was an icon in the industry, just a tremendously nice guy. I learned a lot about how to treat customers from him. I learned a lot about the right way to do business, he was an honest man, and so I would say he was definitely a mentor early on. He’s probably one of the biggest ones in this industry. Now I’ve had some business mentors that are in other industries and would encourage, when people invest, they always say diversify. I use that same concept here, get mentors from other industries, business mentors. I’ve been very fortunate I’ve been able to learn from very successful business people and use those as mentors, but Bob was the biggest one in this industry. The other way I would answer that question is working for other companies, I learned how NOT to do business. Which I think might even be a more important thing. I saw things that they did and I thought, “Why are you doing it that way? It doesn’t go with your mission and it doesn’t help the customer. So why are you doing it that way?” So sometimes looking at it from that perspective, you can learn a lot. 

TTZ: Let’s shift out of work mode and all of your, I’m sure as a business owner you have all of this free time. What do you do outside of work? 

KF: I guess first and foremost, I have a family, so my wife and I have been married 23 years now, and we have four kids. My oldest just graduated high school, she’s 18. Then I’ve got a 16, a 14, and 11 year old. They have a lot of activities that they’re involved in and as much as possible I try to be involved in those activities as well. You would think in the industry that we’re in, I would say I love to golf, and I used to. But honestly the last 4-5 years with family and business commitments, golf has kind of gone by the wayside. Some of my oldest customers say, “Come on by, let’s play some golf.” I’m just like, I haven’t even picked up a club in like three years. But other interests, I do love the water and so a lot of times we find ourselves on the eastern side of Virginia doing some type of – whether it’s kayaking, fishing, boating of some sort. Believe it or not, I do love to mow grass, so I find my self not only mowing my own grass, but I’ll try to help out, maybe it’s a school that’s struggling and they need some help, either some advice or just need some extra labor, or a family member…. I find myself on a mower. It’s kind of like I mentioned earlier about getting behind the wheel of a truck, you can put your headphones in and just the rest of the world goes away for an hour and you can just focus on what’s at hand. 

TTZ: What would your advice be for people entering the industry right now? 

KF: Number one, it’s a great time to enter the industry. There is tremendous opportunity right now. Be willing to start at the bottom. Too often people think, they look at their parents and they see what their parents have and they think, “I should have that.” What they don’t realize is that their parents worked for 35 or 40 years to get what they have. So be willing to start at the bottom. Obviously if you don’t have to, that’s great, but be willing to do that. It’s a great industry, it’s almost cliché, but anybody that like outdoors, the turf industry, you’re outdoors and you’re working on a regular basis and you get to enjoy the outdoors, the creation. It’s a great industry to be in. Don’t forget there’s another side of it. There’s the sales side. We always look for good, talented people to join our business. We have better hours than some of the… you do to an athletic facility, a golf course, you’re working weekends and holidays. Well, guess what? We’re off weekends and holidays. That would be my advice. And if somebody is unsure of what they’re doing – take a look at this industry. It’s been around a long time, it’s thriving right now. It’s gone through some periods in the past where it hasn’t thrived, but it’s always been there.

I was with one of my customers one time, and I told him, “At the end of the day, we’re just talking about growing grass, and it’s not having an effect on the world.” And he stopped me right there and he said, “You need to understand this, we have veterans who come out to play golf on a regular basis. We have other people who have experienced trauma in their life, and they use this as a getaway. We provide an excellent service and we have an effect on people from all walks of life.” I thought that was so profound, and it changed my perspective after that. I thought, “Yeah. What we do does really matter for people and it’s a great industry to be involved in.”

TTZ: I have found that it is a welcoming and friendly and collaborative, fantastic industry. It really surprised me…

KF: The interactions the different facilities have with each other, their owners may feel like they’re in competition with each other, but the turfgrass managers, as a general rule, are all a community and they share. “Hey, what works good for you?” And they’ll share that information with each other. The people that are actually growing the grass, it’s a real community. From the sales side, we’re just glad that we get to be a part of it. They need the products, so we’re providing a valuable service to them, but it really is an honor for us to be involved in that community that they’ve developed among themselves.

If somebody wants to start out, and start a business, just be aware that connections that you make, you may never know how those connections may come back in your life to help you. Over the years of our business, we have had people come into our lives and they may have only been in our life for six months, but they fulfilled a need that we had at that time. I can think of half a dozen that I’ve never seen since then. We had one trucking company that came in and they were hauling products up to New York and they needed something to come back to Virginia. We happened to be buying some stuff from people up in New England. Well thehy did that for about six months, which was so helpful to us, and then I’ve had no contact with them since. Those people come in and out of your life and you just don’t realize what impact or service they may provide. So my advice is just treat everybody well. I personally have levels of expectations as to how I want to be treated as a customer, and I try to pass that along to all of my customers because I want to have the best level of service, but on the same side, I also use that with my suppliers and with all the support people that we have. We’re a company that, we pay our bills, I don’t use my suppliers as a bank, and I didn’t take a salary for the first six months of the business. We wanted to make sure that our suppliers were going to be paid. Just treat everyone how you want to be treated. That’s a Biblical concept. Because you never know – those people will come in and out of your life, and if you treat people well, the right people will come to you at the right time.

TTZ: Don’t miss an episode of Virginia Turfgrass. Subscribe at Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also visit us at TheTurfZone.com.

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