TºCool Partner Spotlight
Doug Steeves @ All Things Turf - Parker, CO
Jacob Tetrault: Doug, Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Doug Steeves: I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago and I’m an Eastern Illinois graduate and a USMC Veteran of Desert Storm. I have had the entrepreneurial bug since I was a kid. I was fortunate enough to grow up behind the 3rd hole on a private country club where I learned to golf (my late father was a golf nut). When I wasn't playing or practicing golf or basketball, my buddy and I would be fishing golf balls out of the creek on our bellies on Mondays when the club was closed. We would clean them up and sell them on Saturday and Sunday mornings to golfers as well as lemonade and would make a killing (until the club pro would chase us off!). During high school and college summers I worked for a small landscape company and had developed a passion for working outdoors, being creative and really transforming spaces. After college (B.S. in Recreation Administration) and the Marine Corps I moved to Denver for about 5 years trying to find my "career job" in my field. I had a family business opportunity that I could not pass up that took me back to the Chicago area in '96.
All Thing’s Turf Showroom - Parker, CO
Jacob: What made you enter into the synthetic turf industry?
Doug: After managing/growing the family auto franchise for 5 years I had decided to follow my passion and find a business that had something to do with golf. I found a tiny, boxed-sized ad in the classified section of Golf Digest promoting a backyard artificial putting green. That was the day I "discovered" the turf industry.
In 2001 I founded Custom Greens, Inc., (changed to Synthetic Turf of Illinois in '05) and successfully grew that design/build artificial putting green business over the course of 19 years. We added artificial grass, baseball turf, tee-line turf and bocce ball courts in 2005. We acquired a competitor, Chicago Dream Grass and after the economy recovered in 2012, things really started to take off. My life's plan had always been to get back to sunny Colorado. Both of my daughters chose to attend SEC colleges out of state (smart lads) so at that time we sold the companies to a friend and headed west to Denver. My wife Alicia and I founded All Things Turf, LLC and just completed our 3rd season. Two years ago we founded U.S. Power Broom, a company that imports electric power brooms for artificial turf for the end-user as well as for smaller installations.
Jacob: Any favorite turf memories?
Doug: We have two favorite memories/turf projects in the last few years where we used TCOOL. The first was a 3,000 sq-ft par 3 residential green where TCOOL was used in all of the fringe and rough. The second was the largest residential lawn project I have done to date (7k sq-ft). ( Picture and Video Below )
Doug: Our first jobs were pre-digital cameras. We would get pictures developed and put them into a "scrap book" before we had a website (back when we were distributors for a national company, no dealers had their own websites, everyone said "just send them to the national site" - which had palm trees in all the pictures. We wanted to show people our work so it started with printed pictures. ( Pictured right) This is one of our first "dog runs' before there was TCool or any other anti-microbial infill and we didn't know how bad it was to use rubber...but that is what our parent company suggested. We have learned SO much over the last 21 years!
Jacob: Where do you see the synthetic turf industry going in the next 5 years?
Doug: I think the industry will continue to grow at a rapid rate - all segments; athletic fields, residential/commercial lawn turf, golf greens, pet turf with the surge of daycare/boarding facilities, commercial playgrounds, indoor sports facilities, the applications are endless. With CA/AZ/CO and all the other western drought states experiencing continued lack of water, more and more cities and municipalities are seeing the huge water saving benefits of artificial grass. More and more cities in Colorado are banning any new commercial buildings from installing real grass. No HOA is allowed to turn down a homeowner's request for artificial grass in Colorado any longer. We also see a huge movement towards turf maintenance. For these reasons, we decided to name our company ALL THINGS TURF. We don't just want to install the turf but we want our customers to have the right turf with the right infill, have maintenance devices and cleaning solutions as well as consulting and training services for the DIY customer. We do believe that turf maintenance, whether it be specialized cleaning/mtc companies, equipment, devices, etc will continue to grow in popularity as people now realize turf isn't "maintenance free" but rather low maintenance.
Jacob: Why do you use TºCool Infill?
Doug: We chose TCool because the sun in Denver is extremely intense due to our altitude and the amount of sun we get here, which makes turf very hot. With the amount of residential lawn turf we sell and install, we wanted to offer our customers a product that would truly keep their turf cooler in temperature for their kids and pets as well as cleaner since it is antimicrobial. TCool has made a big impact on our artificial grass installation business in 2022. When it came down to it and people compared "apples to apples", the difference maker for us was usually TCool, we offered it and others did not. We like to be on the forefront of things, much like we were 21 years ago when we started in the turf business. In 2022, we shattered our all-time sales in record with our previous 19 year-old established company. We give a lot of the credit to our offering of TCool. They are always wonderful to work with and offer exceptional customer service as well as the best infill
Contact Doug Steeves Below:
https://www.allthingsturf.com/