When we entered the lawn mower business 28 years ago, it was not our strategy or grand plan to create a Walker Mower family. And yet with our approach to business (family style) and with the drive to be most interested in people and relationships, a family has been formed.

Mel Taylor, owner of Mel’s Lawn Maintenance in Las Cruces, New Mexico, started mowing lawns part-time in 1984. At the time, he committed to this work until he found a better job. Twenty-three years later, he hasn’t found that elusive something that will give him as much pleasure and freedom as running his own business.

After being a Wal-Mart Supercenter co-manager for 10 years, Roger Krans wanted a change. “I wanted to do something different, but I just didn’t have the guts to leave the corporate life,” he recalls. “I had good benefits and was making a good wage, and starting your own business can be risky when you have a family.”

A first glance, the 25-acre campus at San Joaquin Gardens in Fresno, California, appears more like a display garden than a retirement community. It’s actually both.

It’s a picture perfect Colorado morning in Grand Junction. The blue sky and distant mountains provide the ideal backdrop for four Walker Mowers and a John Deere wide-area mower making their way across the green expanse.

An intriguing question is: “How does Walker compete in an industry dominated by large corporations, as a David among Goliaths?” Part of the answer comes from being an independent company. Being independent allows us to make decisions that are best for our product and our customers, unencumbered by layers of corporate management urging compromise. At Walker we answer to no parent corporation. Walker faces none of the “quarterly earning pressure” of publicly traded corporations where shareholders demand profit each quarter, which virtually erases the possibility of long-term thinking.