Teamwork Marks Kansas City Sand and Blending Firms

Jan. 2001

Two Kansas City firms -- Holliday Sand Co. and Precision Blending -- have a very successful business relationship that takes some explaining to understand.

Some of the factors in their unique arrangement are that:

• Both are distributors for Dakota Reed Sedge Peat, yet each helps to sell the products and/or services of the other.
• Precision Blending’s sales area for Dakota Peat covers western Missouri and eastern Kansas, except for Kansas City proper, which belongs to Holliday. The main business for Holliday is selling sand. The focus for Precision Blending, which purchased a Dakota 2250 Hydro blender to get into the business three years ago, is blending.
• Precision Blending pushes the use of Holliday Sand on the jobs it does. Holliday Sand, in turn, has Precision Blending do virtually all of the blending that its work requires. Both sell Dakota Peat.

"We work really closely with Holliday," Jim Drew, owner-manager of Precision Blending, says. "It's a win-win situation for both of us. I sell blending...and peat when the job is out of Kansas City proper. Their main business is to sell sand...and peat, too, when the job is in Kansas City."

Holliday has six sand plants in Kansas City; two in Tulsa, Okla.; and single plants in Topeka, Kans., and St. Joseph, Mo.

"A lot of people don't see our end product, so when they are shown on national TV on Sunday or are seen by thousands who are at the games, it is really neat," Jeff Jones, who heads sales efforts for Holliday Sand, relates. The satisfaction of seeing the results of the sand-peat mix on golf courses, Jones says, is even better when they hear people talk about the great turf at Kauffman and Arrowhead stadiums.

"At the games, we hear a lot of comments about how beautiful the fields are, and it really makes you feel good knowing that we were a part of that," Jones says. "When golf people ask me for references, a lot of times I'll just point them toward Arrowhead or Kauffman (formerly Royals Stadium)."

Both stadiums were originally constructed with artificial turf playing fields and then converted to natural turf. The change to natural turf at Kauffman occurred in the early 1990s under the supervision of George Toma, the longtime head groundskeeper at both stadiums.

"He's the guru of turf," Jones says of Toma. "Everybody knows George Toma. It's funny, but Kansas City had the best turf guy in the business and all he did in those stadiums for those first years was to vacuum the artificial turf."

Holliday has had a longtime association with Toma, who in building practice fields for the Chiefs and in doing consulting work in the region has specified that Dakota Reed Sedge Peat be used in the sand.

"We've also had a long association with Dakota," Jones says. "We're very happy with them and our customers are very happy with the product. With Dakota, we feel that we're providing them with a real quality product. And we, of course, work closely with Precision Blending."

Drew's entry into the blending business came after a 22-year career with Miller Brewing Co. during which he became sales manager for the Kansas City area. "My wife calls it a mid-life crisis," he jokes about the decision to get into business. The blending opportunity came out of a discussion with friends in the golf industry, who thought it had some real potential. Now, when not out selling Holliday sand, Dakota Peat and Precision Blending, Drew is on the job site with an employee operating the Dakota 2250.

Of his sales efforts in Kansas City, Drew says, "The more sand and peat I can sell for Holliday, the more blending I do. There isn't any concern about who gets the credit for the peat sale."

Neither is there any problem with their work. "There have been a few instances when our competition has done a job with a lower quality peat and problems with those greens have developed on down the road," Jones says. "With Dakota, we've never had a problem with that or with any tests coming back that didn't meet specifications. A lot of people recognize the Dakota name as a quality product, which makes the job of selling the greens mix a lot easier. Sand is sand. Ours is probably just like that of the guy down the road, so we can only provide the customer with better service and, by using Dakota and Precision Blending, with a better quality product."