John R. Hesse, Founder and President
Jack Hesse is an experienced horticultural entrepreneur and executive with over 30 years' experience financing, acquiring, and managing companies in broad segments of the garden products industry. These companies include leading suppliers of nursery, ornamental plants and bulbs, agricultural technology and plant innovation companies, as well as leading vegetable and flowering seed companies.
Jack launched his career as the Founder and then served as the President of American Garden Products (AGP), the largest commercial grower of nursery plants from 1970-1981. Jack built the company into the largest US horticultural enterprise at the time, with $51 million in revenues, earning investors superior returns. AGP was acquired in 1981 by AMFAC after 10 years as a publicly owned business with its common stock traded on the American Stock Exchange.
Following AGP, Jack founded Plant Resources Ventures Funds I and II which were managed by Private Equity Managers. Of the nine investments in agricultural technology and plant innovations, the partnerships brought six to the public markets. In 1994, he founded the Garden Companies, acquiring the leading US Vegetable and Flowering Seed Company, with revenues of $32 million.
In 1997, Jack founded International Garden Products (IGP), which he grew into a $170 million business serving over 5,000 retail stores across the U.S. IGP was the result of the acquisition and integration of Iseli Nursery (Boring, OR), Skagit Gardens (Mount Vernon, WA) Briggs Nursery (Olympia, WA), Weeks Wholesale Rose Grower Inc. (Upland, CA), Ridge Manor Nurseries (Madison, OH), Langeveld International (Lakewood, NJ), Thompson & Morgan (Ipswich, England), Vandenberg Bulb Co. (Chester, NY), and Little Valley Wholesale Nursery (Brighton, CO).
He has served on the board of industry leaders such as Idexx Labs, and his earlier activities in the non-profit sector included serving as Trustee and Executive Committee Member of the Massachusetts Horticulture Society, and Member of The Visiting Committee of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and in various activities at Yale University.
Jack holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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