Selling Grass is Now a Brand?

That’s right folks, you can brand anything and everything. Even grass, sod, turf and seed.

DeLea Sod Farms was founded in 1928 and has supplied turf for Yankee Stadium since the 1960s. They had 10 acres reserved for the stadium, but 80 acres of the sod growing. A former consultant with the company asked the owner Rick DeLea about all of the extra sod, “Rick, you’re just sitting on it. Why not do something with it?” Rick had been selling it to other clients and even local high school stadiums, but that was when it was just called sod. Not Yankees Sod.

David Andres, the former consultant and now VP of Business Development, ran with his initial idea and licensed the Yankees Sod and Yankees Grass Seed to the New York Yankees and Major League Baseball. The once boring sod, now Yankees Sod, can be purchased at Home Depot stores in the New York City area. For only $7.50, you can have a patch of Yankees Grass that is around five square feet. Sure it may cost thousands to replace all of your grass with Yankees Grass, but for the hard core Yankees fan it may be worth it. I mean, it does come with a holographic certificate of authenticity from Major League Baseball declaring it as the official grass of the New York Yankees.

These entrepreneurs aren’t stopping there. They are selling small novelty sizes of the grass seed at Yankee Stadium, and larger bags will be available at Home Depot. DeLea Sod has also contacted all of the farms that supply the other 27 baseball teams with grass sod, and are probably in a good position to help those farmers market and sell Cubs, Red Sox and Dodgers Sod and Grass Seed.

So what started out as a focus to just supply grass sod to Yankee Stadium, turned into something much more. Someone was able to find something that was just sitting around, had value, but wasn’t being marketed properly. And that my friends is where we conclude this story.

There has to be at least one product, one service, one niche, one something that every business can better utilize. Whether it’s a product that deserves its own website or e-commerce site, or a service that isn’t being marketed to its full potential, you can’t tell me or my really big buddies that there isn’t something you can improve on, better utilize, and SELL. Sure, the word “brand” sounds good, but the word “sell” sounds a lot better.