ForConstructionPros.com

When Mitch Barkman sold his Texas parking lot sweeping business and moved back to Ohio to start up again, the decisions he had to make didn't seem that difficult.

"Seems like every business down in Texas was ‘Longhorn Something' and I decided that if I ever got back to Ohio I was going to name my business after the buckeye," Barkman says today. "But after that, all we wanted to do was to sweep a little dirt and plow a little snow."

He soon realized, however, that if he was going to be successful in the Northeast Ohio market it was going to take more than having ‘buckeye' in a company name. First of all Barkman had to decide what kind of sweeping business he actually wanted to run. And the business he came up with — he wanted a service-oriented business that was flexible and responsive — is well on its way to being the success Barkman envisioned.

"The whole purpose when we started parking lot sweeping was to grow the business to the point where we could handle anything sweeping-related, from anyone who called in, no matter how big or small or how little notice we were given," Barkman says. "It's taken us about 10 years to get to that point, but we're there now."

Barkman started in the sweeping business sweeping parking lots in Texas in 1985. Four years later he decided to move back to his home state of Ohio, sold his Texas sweeping business, and started sweeping parking lots as Buckeye Sweeping.