Entrepreneur: Lynda Lee Taggart Business: Interior Green 1911 McGee St. Kansas City, MO (913) 831-9226
Type of Business: Plant-scaping and corporate holiday decor
Year Founded: 1985
Number of Employees: 13 service and support staff, 42 seasonal Keys to Success: “Business is like everything else in life: you get back what you put into it.” —Lynda Taggart
Puttin’ on the Green Eighteen-year-old business provides plants, holiday decor for Kansas City businesses.
By Linda Cruse
With the holidays fast approaching, one woman and her team of holiday elves has already decorated more rooms in Kansas City than most people do in a lifetime.
Working from a freight-district warehouse as busy as Santa’s workshop, the team adorns nearly 100 artificial Christmas trees up to 18 feet tall, suspends hundreds of holiday wreaths and fashions countless festive displays.
The holiday decor accents 162 buildings throughout Kansas City, including the Corporate Woods complex in Overland Park, the Country Club Plaza, The Overland Park Convention Center, City Center Square and Town Pavilion in downtown Kansas City.
The decorating, which begins about two weeks before Thanksgiving and is completed by the first weekend in December, is the work of Interior Green, an 18-year-old Kansas City, Mo., business specializing in plant-scaping and holiday decor. Founded in 1985 by Lynda Taggart, the business has grown from a small operation in Taggart’s suburban Johnson County home into a company that has exceeded sales expectations. Taggart credits her success to family, friends and dedicated employees.
“I remember my first plant project on Dec. 1, 1985, for a local law firm,” said Taggart. “My brothers helped me install the plants while my mom took care of my son. Later, when we started holiday decorating, I enlisted the help of friends to make thousands of red bows for poinsettias. Now, I have a great staff of very dedicated and talented people with whom to work. We’ve come a long way and I couldn’t have done it without them.”
The staff has grown alongside sales, expanding from 13 year-round workers to a team of 42 when seasonal employees are added for the holiday season.
“I’m doing what I love,” said Taggart. “I consider it a blessing that I’ve found a way to transform my love for plants and decorating into a business.”
Interiorscape Magazine, a national trade publication, has recognized Taggart’s design work with two national awards. And, Taggart is in the process of designing exclusive holiday creations to sell to companies throughout the world.
Green Thumb A Johnson County native, Taggart attended Shawnee Mission North High School and the University of Kansas. It was in college that she discovered her green thumb.
“I needed a job and there was a garden center nearby, so I applied,” she said. “I worked in the greenhouse and became the tropical plant specialist. I loved learning about the plants. I memorized their scientific names and learned about their care.”
After college, Taggart worked for a graphics company, selling barcode labels. Soon after starting, she accepted a job transfer to Minneapolis.
“I liked my job and enjoyed the travel, but I still wanted to find a way to make a career with plants,” Taggart said. “That’s when I received a job opening notice from a Kansas City friend about a plant position.”
Taggart applied and was hired on the sales and design team for Botanicus, a company offering plant-scaping for Kansas City businesses. She returned to Kansas City and worked for the company until it went out of business.
“I loved working with plants and knew that was how I wanted to make a living,” she said. “So, three months after my son, Cole, was born, I started my own company from a home-based office. My Mom proved to be an enormous help with both Cole and my daughter, Sara. As a divorced mother of two, I couldn’t have achieved my goals without her assistance.”
Cultivating Clients Taggart’s sales experience was invaluable when it came to starting her own business. She was, and still is, in charge of sales and marketing for her business.
“I truly enjoy meeting with clients and talking about what we can do for them,” she said. “Ninety percent of our client base is crossover, meaning that we provide both plants and holiday decor for their businesses. It works out great.”
As the company’s client base has steadily grown, so has the need for additional space. After outgrowing her home base, Taggart moved the business in 1991 to an 1,800 square-foot space in Merriam. She later moved into a 6,000 square-foot warehouse at her current location in downtown Kansas City, Mo.
“Downtown has always been a niche market for me, so I wanted to be located here,” she said. “But, we’ve already outgrown this space and will soon be looking for a new location.”
Blooming Business Taggart originally specialized in plant-scaping for corporations and branched out into holiday decor about 14 years ago.
She receives her plants through a distribution hub in Linwood, Kan.
“Most of my plants are Florida grown, but some come from California and even Hawaii,” she said. “All of the interior plant-scapes are done with tropicals. We use a lot of exotic palms, orchids and blooming plants in our designs, and specialize in offering unique plant containers in our designs. We had a ceramic container with iron stand made specifically for a downtown client, The Town Pavilion.”
Providing plants is a year-round business. When she’s not creating interior tropical designs, Taggart is busy creating colorful displays for exterior containers.
“This aspect of the services we offer is a popular favorite. There are so many wonderful choices in exterior plant material, and we have fun creating unique designs and installing the projects. We redesign the containers quarterly and it’s always exciting to see the seasonal change.”
“We also offer a huge poinsettia service,” she said. “We provide live, potted plants for businesses throughout Kansas City, as well as poinsettia trees. We service and maintain them once or twice a week up until the holidays, when most clients give them to their employees.”
Decking the Halls To keep herself sane during the holiday season, Taggart employs warehouse supervisors in charge of scheduling clients’ jobs. “I have warehouse supervisors for both the holiday side and plant side. They coordinate all the scheduling of the extra holiday ‘elves’ as well as putting the decorations up and bringing them down in January.”
Although the time spent designing and removing decorations lasts only about eight weeks, providing holiday decor is a year-round operation. As soon as the last ornament is placed in storage, Taggart is traveling to markets in Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago to purchase items for the next year.
Decorations are stored from floor to ceiling in the Interior Green warehouse. Shelves are stacked with clear, plastic containers that are labeled and numbered with clients’ names and holiday designs.
A part of the warehouse nicknamed Christmas Tree Lane is where about 100 artificial trees are stored.
“Our largest tree is 18 feet tall, and our wreaths range in size from 48 inches to 10 feet in diameter,” Taggart said. “The large ones have to be hung from the rafters for storage.”
Before the holidays, vans arrive at the building’s loading docks to be packed with decorations. The company’s team of elves then travels to various buildings, working countless hours to transform corporate lobbies into beautiful holiday wonderlands. “We design all of our own displays and have a number of items that are exclusive to Interior Green,” she said.
Seeds of Knowledge While many business owners develop a business plan prior to starting a business, Taggart didn’t develop her plan until about seven years ago when she went through the Kauffman FastTrac program.
“Even though I was well into my business at that time, I’d have to say it made a tremendous difference,” she said.
Taggart created a workable business plan and was rewarded by having her plan selected by program officials to appear on the FastTrac Web site.
“I worked hard to prepare a full and complete plan, including a marketing plan and budget projections,” she said. “I find myself referring back to the plan frequently. My plan projected 20 percent sales increases each year and we have actually surpassed that goal. Business has actually been better than anticipated.”
In addition to FastTrac, Taggart credits having a good relationship with her banker and accountant, as well as a support group of family and friends, as reasons for her success.
“I’m involved in trade organizations that also have been extremely helpful: IREM, which is a real estate management organization, BOMA, the Building Owners and Managers Association, and the Urban Core Development Group,” she said.
Looking Ahead In addition to moving into a larger space, Taggart plans to design and develop holiday decor to market to florists and other plant service companies throughout the country.
“We are in the preliminary stages of designing some exclusive decor items such as ribbon, ornaments and botanicals that are custom-made for Interior Green and marketed to other florists and plant-scapers,” said Taggart. “We have been perfecting the system for corporate displays for many years now and understand the needs of the corporate client as well as the contractor. I’d like to offer a complete line of nicer decorations that will help other companies fulfill those needs, and raise the standard of quality for corporate-level displays.”
The items would be manufactured in Taiwan and then distributed throughout the country, she said.
“We have some basic items that work well in corporate settings, and that’s what I would start with. I’m really excited about some of my plans for the future.”
Linda Cruse is managing editor of Kansas City Small Business Monthly.
