Eric Parsons / Star staff Bamboo Pipeline employee Ramon Valdez helps unload a new shipment of plants on Tuesday night. Instead of inventory sitting around from four to six months as it would at a typical nursery, plants sit for just hours or days at the Camarillo company.

Bamboo Pipeline considers itself the FedEx of plants.

It uses a similar business model but ships plants instead of boxes, said Mike Cornell, the company's executive vice president.

The Camarillo firm delivers plants, trees and other landscape materials to contractors in California and Nevada. It has developed software that enables the company to generate the sales of a 160-acre nursery from a five-acre distribution center on Wood Road, a short walk from the company's headquarters.

Instead of inventory sitting around four to six months as it would at a typical nursery, plants sit for just hours or days at Bamboo Pipeline. The company turns inventory 25 to 50 times faster than its competitors.

Cornell likens the operation to a trading floor on Wall Street. Instead of buying and selling stocks and bonds, Bamboo Pipeline's employees buy and sell trees and plants.

Selling trees and plants online is a tough task because people tend to be hands-on customers. But in a large, green building on Aviador Street, Bamboo Pipeline is trying to alter a staid industry that has been slow to upgrade.

Dubbed "the buyer's workbench," the company's sophisticated software tracks more than 10,000 plants and trees, while giving buyers real-time data that can be sorted by cost, quality, quantity and past performance from 800 vendors that the company uses.

"We say we offer market best' because we cherry-pick the highest quality from growers," President Matthew Fay said.

The purpose is to save contractors time, money and frustration. Through market research, Fay and Cornell discovered that most landscape contractors spend 25 percent of their time trying to find the plants they need. Instead of calling 15 growers to find 30 different plants, a contractor or architect can rely on one call, fax, e-mail or online visit to gain access to thousands of plants, as well as landscape materials such as irrigation, drainage and lighting products.

The company was founded in 2000 by Cornell and Fay. In its first year, Bamboo Pipeline generated $1.1 million in revenue. Business has grown 40 percent to 50 percent each year since. The company totaled $11 million in revenue in 2006, and projects sales to reach $16 million in 2007 and $22 million in 2008.

The founders say they've barely scratched the surface. Of an estimated 80.5 million households with yards or gardens, 42 percent spent $44.7 billion for at least one type of lawn or landscape service in 2006, according to Jonathan Bardzik, director of marketing and industry relations at the American Nursery and Landscape Association.

Bamboo Pipeline employs about 75 horticulturists, buyers, account specialists, certified nursery professionals and drivers. The company's office has a subtle scent of soil and is almost always buzzing with activity.

The company takes about 50 orders a day, totaling from $75,000 to $100,000. The average phone or fax order is $1,300, while the average Web sale is from $1,500 to $1,800, Cornell said.

Orders are frequently delivered to job sites within 24 hours. Bamboo Pipeline has a fleet of 14 trucks that leaves the nursery full of deliveries, and they return at night with plants purchased from growers. New plants are checked for quality by horticulturists and labeled before they are shipped the following morning. The overnight process is "like a ballet," Fay said.

"This is truly a one-of-a-kind, revolutionary model for horticulture distribution," Cornell said.

Ken Kramer, owner of Pacific Coast Landscape in Ventura, has been a customer since Bamboo Pipeline started.

He said the company, which he uses about 70 percent of the time, has saved him a ton of time. He's impressed that it can give him immediate information on the price, availability and size of any plant or tree he requests.

"There's no other company out there that does that," Kramer said. "They're a one-stop shop."

He added that the pricing is fair, just a little higher than a wholesale nursery.

Bamboo Pipeline has grown rapidly, despite a start that was modest compared to initial goals.

Finding financial backing for a wholesale distribution company driven by technology was challenging during the "tech wreck," the founders say.

They wanted to raise from $15 million to $20 million in initial funding, but obtained only $2 million, which ended up as a "blessing in disguise" that forced them to run a tight operation, Fay said.

This will be the first year the company will be profitable, Cornell said, adding that it is poised for expansion over the next few years into Seattle, Portland and Phoenix. In addition to its Camarillo operations, the company has a distribution center in Sunol, which serves Northern California and Reno.

On the Net:

www.bamboopipeline.com