This week I joined Rochford Garden Machinery and their dealers on a trip to the Al-Ko facility in Kötz, Germany.

A superb and fascinating time was had by all. The organisation by Stewart, Mark, Lewis, Kerry and the whole team was second to none. I for one particularly enjoyed the new system of counting everybody on to the bus!

Seriously though the trip was full of great insight and enjoyment. It was very clear how much the German and Austrian bosses at Al-Ko valued their relationship with Rochfords and, by extension, with the UK dealers.

This was exemplified by the aspect of the trip which I found most impressive, that of the keenness of the European high-ups to hear what the dealers honestly thought about their machines.

Rochford MD Stewart Anderson impressed this many times on the attending dealers, to please speak up if they have any opinions, gripes or observations on the machinery they deal with on daily basis. If they had any thoughts on how things might be improved, now was the opportunity to get this heard by the people who count.

We were given a practical demonstration of how this had worked in the past where dealer feedback had led to direct change in the manufacture of a machine. We were told many times how it's only the UK market which is obsessed with cutting our grass as low as possible. Mr Trippold the Product Manager from Austria even suggested that UK homeowners would ideally like to cut 2" below the roots if they could!

But from conversations Stewart had with UK dealers which he fed back to Al-Ko production, a ride-on model which wasn't satisfying our market as it couldn't cut low enough and when it was set low the belt had a tendency to jump off, has now been re-engineered. We were shown this new model during an afternoon of product testing, alongside other new developments which will be coming soon.

At each of the product testing stations in the mightily impressive R&D facility, was a Product Manager, each of whom had the ability to instigate change if need be. All again stressed they wanted to hear from the dealers - and believe me they did. But in a constructive fashion and in ways which should hopefully prove most helpful to all parties.

This all struck me as such a marvellous way of working. Listening to the expert guys who are dealing with this machinery every day is clearly paying off for Al-Ko. The impression I received was that this system of feedback was appreciated from all sides. Very impressive.