Alex & Lauren Blass

About Alex & Lauren Blass

Alex & Lauren Blass are behind Blue Ribbon Industries, based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Alex Blass used an SBA loan to buy a small Bentonville landscaping company, and the company later bought Blue Ribbon Lawns during COVID.

On episode 44 of NWA Founders, the Northwest Arkansas business podcast, published July 7, 2026, they shared the story of the business. The conversation runs 1 hr 38 min. Alex and Lauren Blass are the husband-and-wife team behind the Blass family office in Northwest Arkansas, a fourth-generation operation that spans Blue Ribbon Industries, commercial real estate, and master-planned development. Alex grew up in Little Rock and came to NWA for college, eventually joining Sage Partners and taking a bet on a small landscaping company that became the foundation for everything that followed. Over the next several years he scaled aggressively, sometimes too aggressively, building trucking, site work, dumpster, and topsoil businesses on top of multiple development deals, all while processing the loss of his mother.

Jump into the conversation

1. 0:10How Alex got his start: the "crazy young guy" who approached Miss Hunt at Sage, bought a landscaping company with an SBA loan, and doubled revenue in year one
2. 7:34Why Alex says working together as a couple has been the hardest thing in 17 years, and also the best
3. 15:46The 18-month period where grief over his mother's cancer diagnosis drove Alex to launch five businesses simultaneously, and what it cost him
4. 35:22The design philosophy behind Bellevue: building something that looks like it has been there for 100 years in a market full of new construction
5. 51:18Alex's case for why Pinnacle can become the true downtown of NWA, and why TIF districts and shared parking structures are the key to getting there
6. 1:25:40Lauren on leaving her SVP career, the health wake-up call that forced the decision, and what she'd tell other women in the same position

About Blue Ribbon Industries

• Site services / landscaping / trucking, Fayetteville
• br.industries

I worked in client service, but ultimately at the end of the day, you're teeing up for the creative team.

Show notes, chapters and transcript →