When Julia Markovic needs her grass cut, she doesn’t start up her lawn mower. She turns to her smartphone.
The Highland Square resident is an early adopter of Mowz, an app that connects her with a lawn-care company whenever she needs one. Mowz, the lawn-care component of the free app Plowz & Mowz, went online in early May and is available in Akron and 28 other metropolitan areas — as of earlier this week, anyway. The network is expanding fast.
Markovic said she started using the service after she had trouble finding landscapers to mow the lawn at the house she and her husband, Mike, bought in April.
“With the new house, my husband hasn’t been able to mow as often as he wants. And I’m allergic to grass,” as well as pregnant with twins, she said. She tried to hire a landscaper, but she said she had trouble getting companies to return her calls.
“I was getting to the point that I was creepin’ on people’s trucks as they drove by,” she said with a laugh.
Markovic found Plowz & Mowz in the iTunes App Store and decided to give it a try, even though she said it seemed like a long shot. She downloaded the app, entered some basic information about her property and before long got a price quote and an opportunity to schedule the work.
She has to schedule a day out, but that’s fast enough for her. Mowz gives her flexibility, so she can get the grass cut when it’s needed, not according to a prescribed schedule.
Mowz is an outgrowth of Plowz, an app that helps people hire snow plowing services. Plowz was launched last fall with about eight drivers in Syracuse, N.Y., and in a month and a half had expanded to more than 300 drivers in the Syracuse, Cleveland and Minneapolis areas, said Dan Lopez, one of the apps’ developers.
Many of the plow drivers are landscapers who do yard work in the warmer months, Lopez said. “A lot of them were like, ‘If you guys do a lawn app, we’re on board.’ ”
So they did.
Lopez said Mowz works with more than 400 service providers and is expanding continually to new areas. “Grass grows everywhere,” he said.
Many of the company’s expansion decisions are driven by demand, he said. When 800 people downloaded the app within a day and a half in Tampa, Fla., for example, the company went looking for lawn-care companies to meet the needs of those potential customers.
Mowz works a little like Uber, the ride-share app that identifies drivers for hire in a user’s vicinity and enables that person to reserve a ride. In this case, the app links the user to a lawn service nearby and streamlines the scheduling and payment processes.
Lopez said the amount of lead time required depends on the number of providers available in the area and their schedules. The app will tell the customer how quickly someone can come to cut their grass, which may be as soon as the next day.
The app is available for both Android and iOS devices, but you don’t need a smartphone or tablet to use the service. You can also schedule mowing — and snow plowing, for that matter — through the company’s website, http://plowzand mowz.com.
Mowz works only with lawn-care companies that have commercial-grade equipment and at least $500,000 in general liability insurance, Lopez said. Customers are asked to rate their satisfaction with the job, which allows the company to keep tabs on the quality of the work.
A provider that gets a satisfactory or good rating is given the opportunity to cut the same customer’s grass next time, Lopez said. That way, good lawn-care companies are rewarded with more opportunities.
If a provider gets an unsatisfactory rating — symbolized by a sad face on the app — Mowz will follow up with the customer to make things right and will reduce the geographic size of the contractor’s potential customer base from a 15-mile radius to one mile, Lopez said. The contractor then needs to prove itself again to get its radius increased.
Lawn-care services that fail to improve are dropped, he said.
The cost of mowing varies by region and by job. Lopez said a typical quarter-acre, residential lot in the Cleveland-Akron area costs $35, but the price is higher if there are circumstances such as dog feces in the yard, fences or steep grades. Although the customer agrees to the price up front, Lopez said the cost can change if the contractor gets to the yard and discovers the customer provided incorrect information about the property. In that case, Mowz will follow up and offer a new quote.
“Whether the customer says yes or no, we pay the provider for his time,” Lopez said.
Mowz keeps 10 to 30 percent of each transaction, said Wills Mahoney, one of the company’s founders. The exact figure depends on the market and the arrangement with the provider, he said.
In return, the lawn-care services get business funneled to them. Mowz also processes the payments and pays the providers within 24 hours, “so they don’t have to invoice or chase down money,” Mahoney said.
Lopez said lawn-care services sometimes complain that Mowz is taking away business, but he disagrees. The company, he said, does outreach and pricing research so service providers don’t have to. “We’re increasing the market,” he said.
Jimmy Matweyou, owner of Jimmy’s Lawn Service in West Akron, said working with Plowz last winter and now Mowz has been a good fit.
He isn’t bothered that the company takes a cut of his fees, since he can accept only jobs that are close to his regular mowing routes and avoid spending money traveling to far-flung customers. “You can pick and choose which jobs you take,” he said.
Markovic laughed about the first time she hired a lawn service through Mowz. The contractor showed up with a big riding mower to cut her small city yard, “so they were loaded for bear,” she said.
But she’s been pleased with the work of the landscapers, who not only cut the grass but also do edging.
“They do a great job,” she said.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MBBreckABJ, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckABJ and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.