It's a funny old season.

That's what I've been hearing from dealers and suppliers alike just recently. Would you agree? 

I remember writing on here a few weeks ago, how a couple of dealers from opposite ends of the country had remarked to me how the season was progressing like a rollercoaster, with pronounced ups and downs. A decent start followed by a distinct drop-off. I was hoping to hear of some recovery since then, but I'm not so sure? What have you been finding in your stores?

This week it was from a supplier that I heard a similar assessment of the year thus far, when Iseki UK held a new product launch for the trade press.

The company who are 18 months old now, have been building their dealer network during this past year and a half and are still looking to appoint in key areas. Head honcho, David Withers, was saying that by talking to dealers around the UK and through their own experiences, he is of the opinion that it's turning out to be an odd kind of season.

David said, "Quarter 1 wasn’t too bad, what with the warm February which saw the grass grow a bit. But then we just never really got any rain during the March period. Normally you tend to get that strong, Spring flush in April when the grass really grows – and that usually drives a lot of the business. Certainly for the consumer end of the market it does, where so much of that business is ‘distress purchases’.

"However we just didn’t see that domestic surge of business that you usually get in that May time."

David went on to say that interestingly, what with the weather having changed during last few weeks, they can pretty much immediately see a direct change in business. "If you get rain across the country today," he said, "in two days time the phones will start ringing more."

David's opinion was that it is starting to look, in general, like June is going to be better than April was.

In terms of professional machinery sales though, David felt that there hasn't really been that same impact. He put this down to the commercial customers making more organised purchases. "Companies have a capital budget in place," he said, "and they'll have plans to buy a new mower, or new tractor this year regardless. So we haven’t seen that deflect quite as much.

"But certainly in that domestic part of the market, we’ve seen real fluctuations based around the weather."

He also spoke about many domestic dealers carrying over a lot of unsold inventory from last year to this year, essentially because of the lack of rainfall for long periods of 2018. "I think those guys got rid a lot of that stock during Quarter 1 of this year as that was quite a good growing period," he explained. "But I think they’ve filled back up with stock again now. So we need this season to extend a little bit so people can get rid of that stuff."

Is this a familiar story to you? How has this season been for you thus far, compared to last year?

Looking back at my blogs from around this period in 2018, we were discussing just how impactful was the dry spell, combined with the effect of the World Cup, going to be for dealers?

We're clearly not at those kind of extremes right now, but are dealers still feeling the hangover from then? Or has this year's up and down conditions been enough to make it a tricky start to the season?

Or perhaps none of this applies to you and you're experiencing a bumper 2019?

Either way, please let us know in the comments below how you are finding this season so far.