Shipman Enterprises Closes after 14 Years


Thank you for 14 years!

After 14 years of service to the residents of Blackwell Oklahoma, and Kay County with their lawn and landscape needs. We have closed our business as of November 2009.

It was a great pleasure to work with so many of you over the years. But like the old saying goes, good things must come to an end.

SO WHY DID WE CLOSE:

We have been asked this by many people since November. And there is a two main things that caused us to close. As everyone knows, the ecnomy has not been very healthy for the last two years. We took a major hit of profitibility in 2008 when fuel prices reached record highs. We did everything in our power to avoid price increases due to fuel prices. This was probably a big mistake on our part, but we felt and seen many of our loyal customers struggle, so we held our prices steady.

The second blow came on April 1, 2009 from the City of Blackwell. On April 1st, we (as well as the other company serving Blackwell) were contacted by the city manager Mark Skiles. Mr. Skiles informed us that the city was canceling all previous contracts (even though they were valid until June of 2009) and they were going to be doing the maintenance themselves. As many of you know, the City of Blackwell was our largest customer. 80 % of our services and time went to providing to the needs of the city. We basically catered to their request. This proved to be a poor business decision. Instead of them informing us early in the year so we would have time to obtain other business contracts, they opted to wait until the week before we began mowing again for the year to do it. By April, all major mowing contracts are usually signed and impossible to get. We had also passed up bidding opportunities because we realized we were as large as we could be and still provide services in a timely fashion.

So to make a long story short. I was just not going to invest the money once again to build my business back to the size it once was before we got so involved with the City of Blackwell.

We thank all of our customers, and wish them the very best.

Sincerely,

Brett Shipman