JB: When we last left off, Wright Manufacturing was not even in the picture. How did that partnership come to fruition?

CBQ: Very serendipitously. Ed Wright, the CEO of Wright Manufacturing, filled out our contact form.

(Both laugh)

As do several landscapers everyday. Ed reached out and said: “I’ve been watching your YouTube videos” … and by the way, Ed is a well respected resource and industry-celebrity on Youtube. So he says, “I’ve been watching your videos and I have come to the same independent conclusion that you have, that the next big labor productivity will be in self driving lawn maintenance equipment.”

This was just over two years ago. Naturally we were super excited because Wright Manufacturing is the best. They only do commercial landscaping – nothing residential. They focus on labor productivity. They invented the stand-on category. If you think about the most innovative, category-defining outdoor power equipment in the lawn maintenance space, Wright Manufacturing is it.

So for them to come to us and say that meant a great deal.

JB: What did Wright Manufacturing do to reposition their strategy and ultimately execute on their autonomous mowing program?

CBQ: Ed and the team at Wright Manufacturing are brilliant but also practical. It took a while and they needed a lot more proof besides some Greenzie YouTube videos and an email exchange. They needed to see it, needed to feel it, needed to believe it, and they needed to know how it worked. They dove in head first and have committed a massive amount of brain power and resources.

We’ve moved from their small R&D area, to the production line, and they’ve put together immense resources around their customers’ needs. This process is not new to them either. Greenzie and Wright align so well around our mutual obsession to satisfy customers needs, wants, and desires.

JB: Did Greenzie get paying customers first or did you partner with Wright Manufacturing first?

CBQ: We got the customers first, and Wright quickly after. We realized that in order to prove the model, we needed to do both. We needed to go get the big end user fleet landscapers who have drastic labor shortages and a manufacturer to equip sensors and our software.

JB: Examples of those landscapers would be…?

CBQ: The large companies like BrightView, Yellowstone, Juniper, Mainscape, U.S. Lawns.

JB: All of these companies are customers?

CBQ: Absolutely. Right now, we have a small fleet of twelve mowers. We intentionally did a limited production build to make sure we built the foundation correctly before scaling. We’ve deployed mowers across the U.S. including states like Arizona, Georgia, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Texas, anywhere where grass grows on big commercial properties. We’ve gathered data, experience, and learnings for their fleets to be deployed in 2022.

But yes, these customers are using the product. We have fun documenting it on our Instagram which shows our mowers cutting grass in the Hamptons, in Texas, and even down near the Florida Keys.

Greenzie has done something which I believe is very hard and I have to remind myself of this constantly: we could have spent a long time in the lab, in stealth, perfecting everything first before showing it to anyone, but instead, we brought out early prototypes, mowed alongside our customers, and then gave it to our customers to use in the real world. This is harder, but the right way. It can seem easier to build in a lab.

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