The college student working part-time in his dad’s hardware store had always been fascinated by motors, tinkering with them, figuring out how to make them run.
“There were people coming in all the time wanting their lawn mowers and chainsaws worked on,” that student Garry Morrison remembers. Problem was, the hardware store didn’t offer that service. So naturally, the guy with the fascination decided that he would learn how to do it and offer it himself.
“I taught myself how to fix them, started taking them home, kept working on them until I figured out what was wrong and then fixed it.”
He was good at it. When word got out, people started bringing Garry their lawn mowers for him to work on.
“I started doing it in the back of the hardware store, having people come in and drop it off and I’d take care of it, give it back to them.”
The part-time job became full time. “I got so big I had to hire people to help me.”
When it got too crowded in the back of dad’s hardware store, Garry bought his own building. “It got really popular and started blooming, so I dropped out of college and started the business.”
That was over 50 years ago.
You read that right. Garry Morrison has owned and operated what became known as Bartlett Small Engines in Bartlett, Tennessee for over five decades. The family hardware stores are long gone, but Garry’s independent dealership — now with 20 employees offering full-service sales, parts, and service featuring top brand outdoor power equipment such as Hustler, Honda, and Stihl — is still going strong.
His longevity is his signature selling point to his commercial and residential customers.
“If anything, they know they can trust us.”
“I’ve had customers that have been dealing with me for over 40 years. The reason they keep coming back over and over again and wouldn’t think about going anywhere else is because they know me by name, they have my cell phone number, they know they can call me if anything comes up.”
Garry’s philosophy is rooted in treating the customer the way he himself would want to be treated.
“I try to get them in and out, I know their time is valuable,” Garry says. “They don’t want to spend all day standing around here, so we try to take care of them as soon as they get here and leave them with as little downtime as possible.”
He doesn’t mind admitting that he sees every customer as a member of his own family.
“I want to do a better job; it’s more than just a paycheck, it’s a desire to make sure my business works and that people are happy.”
A fixture in the community
Garry no longer has to worry about lack of workspace the way he did in those early days. Bartlett Small Engines kept growing and expanding until now it is a community fixture in a 10,000-square-foot building on a six-lane highway just outside Memphis.
“Other businesses around here use us as a landmark to give directions because everyone knows where Bartlett Small Engines is, so they give directions to their business by telling them where they are in relation to my shop.”
Garry values his community and regularly looks for ways to give back. Bartlett Small Engines supports local youth sports teams, sponsors various programs, and donates equipment for annual fundraisers. And he makes a special point to reach out to the next generation of business leaders so that they might find their way, just as he did in the back of his father’s hardware store.
“I’ve helped a lot of guys get started in the lawn business,” Garry says. “I’ve had a lot of people that work for me as mechanics and they started their own business and went out on their own and I can’t help but feel that the training I gave them helped them get into that.”
Did he know all this would happen 50 years ago?
“No, not at all. I thought I was going to get a college degree and go on, but that didn’t work out for whatever reason. I bought a building and went a different way.”