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In peak season Arrow employs up to 15 people, who can stripe up to 15 jobs a day depending on size and distance from the office. The contractor stripes between 500 and 600 parking lots and between 11 and 15 airports a year.

"When you're doing that many parking lots you really have to figure out where you're going and who's going there," Rottinghaus says.

And by pooling all their individual skills Arrow Striping has figured it out. Sue works in the office, Don works with general contractors and does bidding. He and Heath measure jobs and put together bids (a recent advance is Arrow's use of "smart phones" enabling the company to create and e-mail a bid right from the site). Work orders come in to Anderson, who passes them to Whitney. Whitney schedules and tracks work orders on a magnetic board, and as the jobs come up he gives the work orders to the crews when they are going out "so everyone is working off the same page and knows what's expected of the job," says Rottinghaus, who adds the system grew out of the way the Arrow team worked together.

"We have improved our organization - streamlined ourselves - and we know what needs to be done and who can do what," Rottinghaus says. "Do we actually have a step-by-step written down plan? No, we don't. But we have enough people who know what they're doing and who are good at what they do so we can get out there and get any job done quickly. We have the capabilities to get something done on the spur of the moment, which can make us really valuable to a contractor or property manager who needs something done quickly.

"By simplifying it we know we have a few little steps we need to take. We all have our own roles to play, and it truly is not that complicated."