Charbel Harb made up his mind while taking a stroll with his wife through California’s redwood forest during a recent vacation.
“I told her, ‘You know, honey, we have enough money to retire. What the hell are we still doing running the business?’” recalls Harb, who opened Harb’s Oasis a few years after getting his landscape architecture degree from LSU in 1977.
For Harb, who is nearing his 65th birthday, coming to terms with selling the business he’s poured his life into for nearly four decades is one thing. Finding a suitable buyer to carry on his legacy is quite another.
“My only son became a priest on April 23rd and my two daughters both have their own careers and nine children between them,” Harb says. “My employees are wonderful, but none of them are in a financial position to buy the business, so I really don’t have anybody to take over.”
Taking an idea from an article he’d seen in a trade magazine about a business owner in a similar situation, Harb will early this week put up a large sign at his Coursey Boulevard location announcing that his business is for sale and attempting to tell interested buyers the story of how he built it.
“I’m a do-it-yourself kind of guy,” says Harb, who has hired NAI/Latter & Blum agents Michael Cashio, Hartley Crockett and David Kellenberger to represent him in the sale of business and real estate. “What makes us so unique is that we’re the only water garden center in the city and only one of two in the state of Louisiana and Mississippi. I’m trying to keep that tradition going.”
Harb’s Oasis was originally opened in Gardere, but Harb moved it to its current location at 13827 Coursey Blvd. 23 years ago. The business is located on 2.8 acres. If someone wants the business, inventory and land, Harb is asking $1.3 million, but he’s also willing to sell the business and inventory separately. He’s even willing to consider a lease agreement with a new owner.
Either way, Harb is hoping to have the business under new ownership in the next two to three months. As for the ideal owner, he says it must be someone with solid business acumen who can continue to serve the clientele he’s built over nearly 40 years.
“A business is a business, whether it’s a nursery or a restaurant, so it has to be someone who has experience owning and operating a business,” he says. “We’ve done really well. We’ve survived hell and high water in this business, and I just hope we can find someone to take over this institution, serve our customers and do well.”
—Steve Sanoski
