With no background in farming, Berkeley-raised Harvey Lyman fell into the agricultural chemical industry rather serendipitously. After serving as a radar officer aboard ships in the Pacific during World War II, he returned to Northern California needing a job.

Initially, Harvey worked as a sales representative for Chemurgic, an ag chem and fertilizer business that had coined the Ortho name. Agricultural chemicals as we know them today were in their infancy shortly after the war, and the U.S. government even subsidized them to spur their production and farmer adoption.

Harvey then joined with five other partners to operate Ag Chemicals Inc. before eventually leaving and founding Harvey Lyman Chemicals across the river in Walnut Grove in 1954. He opened Harvey Lyman Agservice in Clarksburg three years later.

Thus was the start of what would ultimately grow over the past seven decades into Grow West. Today it boasts 16 core agricultural retail facilities along with satellite operations and a host of allied businesses, including trucking, WaterLabs, Mar Vista and MVP Safety Professionals safety and regulatory compliance.

HONESTY, INTEGRITY AND ETHICS

Throughout the years, the Lyman family has strived to promote the examples set by their father of honesty, integrity and ethics, said Les Lyman, the eldest of Harvey’s three sons.

“He didn’t lecture me on that,” Les said. “He behaved that way, and I immediately picked up on it. Talking to his peers and those in the community, they always said what a good and honest man he was and I just keyed in on that.”

The company also remains independent and family owned, something middle son Scott Lyman said Harvey would be proud of.

“I don’t think he’d be surprised at the success we’ve had,” Scott said. “As he was transitioning out of the day-to-day in his later years, he could see that Les had the leadership, team building skills and vision needed to continue growing the company.

“I don’t know if he envisioned Grow West becoming one of the largest independent ag retailers in California, but I feel he was comfortable and confident passing the torch. If he came back today, after reviewing the financials and figuring out our existing computer system, I think dad would ask Les and Johnny (Council) if we’re doing the very best job possible for our customers and employees. If he was satisfied with what he saw, he would trust his legacy was secure.”

FAMILY BUSINESS SUCCESSION PLANNING

To ensure the family business retains its independence and service-focused philosophy, Grow West has developed a succession plan applicable to board members as well as to key positions within the company.

Les remains the most involved in the business today as Grow West board chairman, although his brothers, Scott and Tom Lyman, are active owners and board members. Tom, the youngest son, also is being mentored to eventually become chairman, but he doesn’t see himself being as hands-on as Les.

“My role will continue to be primarily as an adviser to the business and as a representative of the Lyman family,” Tom said. “I don’t anticipate being part of the day-to-day operations as my brother and father have in the past, but will rely on our talented and experienced management team to run our business as they do today.

“I’ll get involved as needed but anticipate that my primary role will be focused on strategic growth initiatives and making decisions that best serve the business and our family interests in the future.”

As part of succession planning, Les, Scott and Tom also have started educating what they call Gen3 – the 10 children among the three of them – about the family business.

“We also provide them with the history of the company and how our father started and grew the business with the hope of instilling the same sense of pride and obligation to continue his legacy that my brothers and I have for the company,” Tom said.

A PERIOD OF GROWTH

Growing up in what he jokingly describes as a “one-horse town,” Les said he had no intention of returning to the family business after he graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Armed with a degree in ag business management, he joined Shell Chemical as a sales representative, fulfilling one of his dreams.

“There was a whole world out there and I’ve always been a very curious soul who loved travel, new cultures and experiences,” Les said.

About five years later during a Christmas visit, Harvey approached Les about possibly returning to the family business and taking an ownership stake in it. Calling it intriguing, Les said he took his time to weigh the risks and opportunities before saying yes.

“I was in my 20s at that time,” Les said. “It would be stupid not to take this. You can work for yourself and basically not have to put up with all the corporate stuff. And if it doesn’t work out, I’m still young enough and I can still start anywhere.”

Les took the reins in 1974 and started a period of growth and expansion driven by a strategic business plan. The first acquisition was Garden Way Nursery in 1977 in Rio Vista, which he describes as “intentional.”

A series of smaller acquisitions ensued, but the first large one involved Simplot’s Dixon fertilizer facility. With its rail siding, the Simplot Dixon facility was the launching point for the growth. It was followed by acquisitions of Agriform, Agro-Tech/AgUnlimited, Growers Ag Service and AgriSource Maxwell.

The Harvey Lyman companies, which belonged to Ag Source buying organization, and another buying group member were in desperate need of rail access so they could bring in fertilizer at more competitive pricing.

Les broached the subject to Johnny Council, who at the time was running the Dixon facility. “He said, ‘If you can put a deal together to buy this thing, I’ll go with you and bring all the people,’” Les said.

He made a pitch to Simplot’s top managers in Idaho for a joint venture, but it died. About two years later, Les repitched it and Simplot bit. The seven members of Ag Source took a 55% share in Tremont Supply Inc., with Harvey Lyman and Colusa County Farm Supply (CCFS) being the majority shareholders.

A few years later, Simplot returned and said they didn’t like joint ventures and wanted to buy out the Lyman-led group. Les countered, saying they would buy out Simplot. The Idaho company said yes without blinking.

“We absolutely stole the company; Simplot wanted out that badly,” he said. “We were able to buy this huge asset.”

As the years went by, the other minority partners were bought out, leaving Lyman and CCFS. Originally known as Tremont Supply Inc., the business was renamed The Tremont Group, with CCFS a silent partner.

MAINTAINING AN ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

Throughout the growth, individual dealership managers retained their autonomy and the entrepreneurial spirit Les witnessed before they were acquired. As an observer of his competitors, he would see a cultural change after a big box store – as he refers to a national or international corporation – purchased an independent dealership. The entrepreneurial spirit that was once there died as talent exited.

That was something Les said he didn’t want to occur under his watch. “We need to preserve that entrepreneurial spirit, so we’re going to be a company of policies not regulations,” Les said.

But having a host of differently named retail operations did create confusion within the industry, which didn’t understand they were all owned by the same company. In fact, the individual entities were at times viewed as mom-and-pop operations.

Under Grow West President and CEO Ernie Roncoroni, all of the Lyman-owned facilities from Maxwell to Stockton and along the North Coast were brought under the Grow West umbrella brand with a single logo in 2019.

“By consolidating our many independent retail locations under a single name, Grow West, we’re now able to clearly demonstrate the breadth and depth of our company to the industry and to better compete as a large, independent ag retailer, especially against larger corporate-owned entities,” Tom said. “The Grow West name represents quality, service and customer focus. Now all locations share and benefit from the strong brand that Grow West has established in recent years.”

DIVERSIFYING WHERE IT MAKES SENSE

As part of its growth plan and as a way to spread risks, Grow West also began to diversify into different sectors of the ag industry. Regardless of the service, Les said they all have a strong dotted line to their core business, but may be less vulnerable to the same economic swings. Individually, they also have to offer a potential bottom-line benefit and growth opportunity.

“I also look at these things, can we scale it?” he said. “If we can’t scale it to where we can get substantial volume out of it, get it on its feet, get it profitable and start scaling it, then essentially I’m not interested in it.”

While not all have been successful, he said the bulk have penciled out. Among those that have paid off is WaterLabs, an orchard irrigation technology and consulting firm serving the northern Sacramento Valley that Grow West acquired in 2021. Les said he sees demand for irrigation advice only growing as producers face ever-increasing water regulations and declining supplies. Offering this service will enable pest control advisors to further partner with growers to provide a better understanding of irrigation and water-use efficiency.

Another is Mar Vista Resources, a joint venture launched in 2012 with two other partners in Corcoran. The operation produces specialty fertilizers and adjuvants used by Grow West as well as other dealers.

In addition, MVP Safety Professionals is a joint venture that provides consulting, worker safety training and regulatory compliance to agricultural and commercial businesses to keep up with California’s ever-changing regulatory landscape.

CONSOLIDATION ON ALL FRONTS

During his tenure, Les said industry consolidation has been one of the biggest changes, whether at the manufacturer, competitor or grower level.

“Take any sector of our industry – our customers are hugely bigger than they were on the average on an acreage scale,” he said. “And we’re dealing with the generational changes. In my world, it’s not uncommon to be working with the third generation since I started in the business. The generation that’s here now is working with technology. There was no technology when I started, and it’s a huge change.”

POSSIBLE STORM ON THE HORIZON

Although Grow West has been positioned to weather many of the industry’s financial challenges, Les said he remains worried about ever-increasing regulations and laws outside its control.

Comprising mostly city-dwellers, lawmakers could legislate ag chem dealers out of business during one session of the California Legislature. They could, for example, vote in laws mandating the western European agricultural model that eliminates synthetic chemicals. Or they could further tighten water-use regulations.

While remote, he said it’s still possible. “I worry about this – is this the wise thing to do to stay in this?” Les said. “That drove a lot of our friends out of the business that were independents. They didn’t like the risk or the future. If we can be the last one standing as an independent business, there’s opportunity in that, so we’ve chosen that path and we’ll take the risk.”

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Most of what Les describes as low-hanging fruit as far as acquisitions has been harvested through acquisitions or attrition. If a dealership goes up for sale today, it may be snatched up by a big box store for an outrageously overvalued price.

That said, he doesn’t rule out possible mergers in the future providing they make sense to both parties. “Right now we don’t need to, but you never know,” Les said.

Les remains optimistic about the future and points to what he considers Grow West’s strongest asset – the “best darn people in the industry.”

“I’ve always tried to hire people better, smarter, more respected than I would consider myself,” Les said. “Be humble about it and be honest about it, but don’t be bashful about it. And those people do the same thing for their hires. I think what it’s done is it’s given us the best people in the industry, and when you have that for your primary asset and resource, you’re going to do well.”

By maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit and local decision making, he said Grow West remains nimble when it comes to competing with the big box stores. The large national chains are typically mired down in bureaucracy, and any local authority that may have been there at one time is gone.

“The result of that is opportunity for us,” he said.