A Journey of a Thousand Miles . . .

By George Schmok

You know how sometimes things kinda sneak up on you . . . Well, over the past two years of this lingering recession, we at Landscape Communications have been investing in the future at a pace that has not let us dwell on the actual goings on of the outside world.

With this being the 25th year of publishing (LCI publishes two magazines, Landscape Architect and Specifier News was first published in 1985, and Landscape Contractor / Design Build Maintain was first published in 1996), we've been able to enjoy solid business, based on long-term relationships. This has allowed us to concentrate on making the publications and the accompanying web and trade show products even better, when many of our competitors and others in the industry have struggled.

By the time you read this, LCI's premier trade show, The Landscape Expo, will be over and we'll be already planning for the 2011 event, but all of a sudden, six days before the event, we have 33 percent more exhibitors and 25 percent more pre-registered attendees than in 2009. That is due to the hard work of great team members and a focused attitude that we are going to take advantage of these times and lay some solid foundations to build and grow on in the future.

I have had the opportunity to get back into ad sales over the past six months and reconnect with many of our clients. One thing I can tell you is the vast majority of the vendors supplying goods to this industry are eager to see a change in Congress this November.

That said, I see many companies struggling to make sense of the uncertain economy and I see others laying bricks in anticipation of a more certain future. While almost everyone has pulled in their horns, you can sense that the ones who have put down their heads and are plowing forward will come out of this funk with flying colors.

Here at LCI we spent a ton of money and time reinvesting in landscapearchitect.com. Well, all of a sudden, this year we have had more than 875,000 page views and will likely have more than one million page views in 2010!!! landscapearchitect was already the largest landscape-oriented database on the web, with 14,000 vendor listings, 8,700 product photos and 14,000 posted articles. This year, with the redesigned site, we have gained viewership as never before.

In a few weeks our ''Shopping Cart'' will be coming online and things will get even more interactive and the usefulness of the site will increase dramatically.

In fact, we've already given you and about 120,000 other professionals an online account where you can manage your profile and manage the information you receive from us and others in the industry. To take advantage of this service, just look at your mailing label for your account password and take a minute to update your profile.

As a part of this online service we have been able to grow our demographic profiling of you, the readership and concentrate on maximizing our interaction. As a result of this growth, we all of a sudden have had two of the best months in the history of both magazines as far as reader interaction in renewing subscriptions and requesting product information from our advertisers.

So, anyway, while the rest of the country is waiting to see what happens with this coming election, I think it is important to know that the landscape industry, by nature, has the most solid roots of all the professions . . . . And the best thing you can do to ensure a solid future is to keep those roots well watered and fertilized. It is not a good idea to keep your head in the sand and wait things out, but it is good to keep your head down and focus on the next step forward . . . Who knows, you may just look up and see that you've come a long way and are closer to your destination than you realize . . . .

God Bless . . .

George Schmok, Publisher