Davey Tree Flipbooks

141 140 Growth Rings and commitment to the people working within the R/C service line and has been a valuable ambassador for the Davey Company within the industry," Davey Chairman, President and CEO Pat Covey said in a 2010 interview. Celmer reflected on his career in a 2001 Davey Bulletin article. "I'm particularly proud of the consistent profitability of the Residential/Commercial service line," Celmer said. "In the years that I've been at Davey, not much has changed. Different groups of people come and go. But the youth and enthusiasm of this company remains strong." Jim Stief recalled Celmer as a critical personal mentor. "Ken should get a lion's share of the credit for where the Residential/Commercial service line is today," Stief recalled in 2017. "He recognized the importance of camaraderie within the service line and building chemistry. He emphasized the importance of marketing and client experience, training and collaboration. All the pieces and parts. Ken taught me a great deal about how to manage the residential business." Another important personnel change came in 2010, when Jim Zwack joined Davey. Zwack started as director of technical services at Davey with 20 years of experience in the green industry, successfully helping to lead and grow a startup plant health care product sales company. He was later promoted to general manager of the Davey Institute in 2017. As the decade closed, revenues rose in utility services, residential services, and Canadian operations as the company continued to grow. Davey was also making strides in the technological arena with software applications such as i-Tree®. Greg Ina helped develop and maintain partnerships with multiple industry groups, including the U.S. Forest Service. e integrated suite of software products and urban forestry assessment tools were designed to quantify the benefits they provide. Davey started 2011 by announcing a new partnership with Environmental Design, Inc. (EDI), a large tree-moving firm headquartered in Houston, Texas. Davey and EDI entered into a strategic marketing alliance to combine their large tree trans- planting resources and expertise. e move put Davey back in the large tree moving business – work Davey had historically become well known for in the early 1900s. is acquisition also brought experienced people and leading-edge equipment and techniques for moving enormous trees. Initially, the strategic partnership brought marginal success by producing profits, but the marketing benefits and public exposure to the Davey brand proved tremendous. e service was eventually housed under Davey's CLS division. Some years later the business was bought back by the original owners, with Davey maintaining an equity interest in EDI. In August 2011, Davey took part in the groundbreaking of a new office building in downtown Kent to house a mix of retail and office tenants, including the expanding Davey Resource Group. As a corporate tenant in the building and a partner in the redevelopment, which included numerous new buildings downtown, Davey became a critical part of a reinvestment project that would see more than $100 million in public and private investment poured into downtown Kent. e company played a leading role through its commitment for room occupancy and use of the new Kent State University Hotel and Conference Center facilities. e redevelopment efforts also included hundreds of millions of dollars in construction on the campus of Kent State University to reconnect it to downtown. e company has always been committed to its hometown going back to the days when John Davey himself worked to beautify and improve Kent by planting trees on thoroughfares throughout the city in the late 1800s. at same year, the company rolled out its DaveyCare client experience program in Residential/Commercial services. e program was designed to help cater service offerings to best fit a client's needs. It started with the promise that DaveyCare would guarantee that Davey stood behind its work. By filling out DaveyCare cards, clients could provide the company with service feedback to relay if Davey delivered what the client wanted. Stief explained in a 2011 Davey Bulletin article that the program was the result of more than a year of dialogue, data gathering and analysis, discussion with clients, numerous meetings, and several workshops – all aimed at improving client service. Introduction of the DaveyCare program coincided with several promotions for Stief. He was named a corporate officer in 2010, and in 2012 he was promoted to executive vice president, R/C operations. "Jim has been most effective in his ability to embrace change and initiate aggressive programs that have been successful in advancing revenue and earnings," Davey Chairman Karl Warnke said. "He has excelled at moving our culture in a more customer and sales-oriented direction." Sandra Reid, vice president of corporate communications and strategic planning administration, had started with Davey in 1986 writing for the Davey Bulletin. She watched the company's marketing and corporate communications departments slowly evolve during her career and under her direction. Historically, Davey's marketing had relied largely on external consultants, and it wasn't until the company conducted detailed research for the rebranding initiative of 2008 that Davey's marketing and communications reached a higher level of sophistication. Reid used the newly acquired knowledge from the rebranding initiative to standardize and validate the research processes and subsequent findings. It was an initiative which, first, focused on the internal aspect of branding and ended with a strong external branding process. "To me the branding was the first time we did real research," Reid recalled in a 2017 interview. "We looked at the survey design, analytics, conducted focus groups, phone surveys and online surveys, coordinated mystery shopping. While green industry companies were doing the same tried-and- true marketing tactics, such as direct mail programs and Yellow Pages advertising, Davey started getting into techniques that were much more sophisticated, like doing retina testing when you develop a new website. […] It was leading-edge marketing for the tree care industry." Following the DaveyCare rollout, starting in 2012, a number of important promotions and organizational changes occurred within the company. Pat Covey was promoted to chief operating officer for U.S. operations. Larry Abernathy was elevated to vice president and general manager of the Davey Tree Surgery Company. Jim Stief was promoted to executive vice president and general manager of U.S. R/C operations and oversaw all new acquisitions and their integration into his business segment. Larry Evans became vice president of operations over the entire Davey Surgery company. A 23-year veteran of the Canadian subsidiary, James Doyle was promoted to vice president and general manager of the Davey Tree Expert Co. of Canada, Limited. Doyle started his career in the Toronto territory working with Murray Linton and under the tutelage of Blair Sayers. Doyle had held various positions of increasing responsibility in the Eastern Canada subsidiary. Now, he was responsible for all of Davey's Canadian operations from coast to coast. As Sayers prepared for his forthcoming retirement in 2014, a period of positive transition and organizational changes started for the Canadian company. e new Chapter 9 Sandra Reid, vice president, corporate commu- nications and strategic planning administra- tion, observes the installation of the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C., in 2011 by Davey's Commercial Landscape Services. Reid started with Davey in 1986 and was promoted to vice president in 2013. James Doyle was named vice president and general manager of the Davey Tree Expert Co. of Canada, Limited, in 2012. Doyle, at the time a 23-year Davey veteran, had started his career in the Toronto territory. Dave Adante, right, talks with Boyd Moore, an employee in the Kent Shop, in 2011. Larry Abernathy speaks during a fire prevention safety meeting in Livermore, California, in 2011. Pat Covey speaks during a Davey Shareholders' Meeting in 2013.

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