It seems slightly odd perhaps to be talking about droughts today, when most of the country will have experienced rain this week - some areas quite significantly.
However, as we are all aware, it will take weeks of sustained precipitation to restore reservoirs back to where they need to be - and crucially as far as our readers are concerned, revive grassed areas from their scorched state.
Everyone reading this today knows what I'm talking about, but as a picture paints a thousand words, here are a couple - in a commercial and a domestic setting - I've been sent by readers concerned with the current conditions:
These stark illustrations set to me wondering just how scenes like this are directly affecting our dealer readers? I contacted a few people around the country in anticipation of this blog today, to begin to get a sense of how the drought might be hitting businesses. Of course nothing acts in isolation. The drought will be something that is combining with everything else that dealers are having to contend with this year - such as supply, cost of living, recruitment etc.
In doing my research I received some fantastic, helpful feedback that I am most grateful for. You can read some of the thoughts that dealers shared with me below.
What would be great today though, is to hear from some more of you dealers reading this, to gain a sense of how the network is coping. I have three questions that it would be amazing to hear your feedback on.
You can leave any comments below this article or, if you'd prefer to remain anonymous, you can email me directly on steve@servicedealer.co.uk in complete confidence, to share with me your opinions. I will look to build the information I receive into an article for a forthcoming edition of the magazine.
The three questions I posed in reaction to the drought were:
- What are your customers saying?
- Are you now pushing back purchases to 2023?
- Do you have concerns about the grass machinery you currently hold in stock?
Before we get into some of the responses I've received so far though, a key takeaway I've picked up on is that going forward dealers are going to need their suppling manufacturers to offer genuine support. And by support I think we're talking about offering flexibility.
With the upcoming winter stock ordering for example, it sounds like dealers want their suppliers to accept that this year is different. Circumstances have conspired to make it that way.
Fundamentally however, nothing has changed the fact that dealers and manufacturers rely on each other. Neither can survive without the other. It's just going forward, it sounds like some understanding and flexibility on behalf of the supply-side of the industry would be appreciated by dealers.
Anyway, below are some examples of opinions I received from dealers that might perhaps get you thinking about how you'd answer those questions. Like I say, please leave a comment or drop me a line if you'd like to contribute to the discussion.
What are your customers saying?
"Both the domestic & professional sector sales have slowed down due to the weather -although the professional customers are still planning ahead due to long lead times and therefore are still placing orders for machinery for later this year/early next year."
"The majority have been happy with the season as it has proved easier for certain jobs to be completed but has also caused issues with turfing/seeding jobs for others. What we do notice is that the patience of customers during Covid is weaning and they don’t really understand why deliveries are taking so long as 'Covid was ages ago'! What is being talked about more now is the price of fuel/electricity/shopping, the essentials in life, are getting expensive. How this develops over the coming months might reflect in PSO."
"Most of the combining has been done, and the general feeling from farmers is that they will not work for a while as the ground is so hard."
"Not only has it not rained, but the negative (but factual) talk of cost of living has not helped and that makes spending power this year less on garden maintenance tools. People I feel are holding out, until there is improvement in our government and waiting to hear some positive news. Of course for dealers winter service work will also be impacted because of the lack of machinery being used. This will be devastating for the service work during the winter period."
"Customer footfall is still good, and what you would expect for August with expected sales. The stressful customers who are normally chasing their mowers due to the grass growing have certainly calmed."
"Consumer customers are few and far between, which is fairly normal for the time of year, but those that need something are buying and we are picking up a bit of service work as we switched our social media to 'never been a better time to have your mower serviced'. Gardeners and Contractors are keeping busy with non-grass related work, hedgecutting etc, but are concerned how quickly the grass will come back when we have some rain.
"Many of our customers are reporting that they are not cutting grass to near the same extent as usual."
"Our domestic garden machinery customers are very quiet but with the current weather this is only to be expected. Our ATV/ UTV business is pretty much as normal to be honest. We have seen an increase in demand for certain products like horse muck sweepers, water pumps and bowsers. I am expecting to see an increase in sales for more products linked to the drought."
"Here it’s just business as usual cutting grass. I have seen many local contractors cutting and strimming as normal."
Are you now pushing back purchases to 2023?
“We have cancelled all grass cutting winter stock / pre-season orders that have still not yet arrived. But keeping our usual full line up of stock within the showroom and warehouse.”
“We are carrying a lot more garden machinery stock than I would like, that’s for sure. I’m being very cautious with reordering because of the lack in sales this year caused by the drought and also the uncertainty in the economy. Early indications from our suppliers seem they are aware and prepared for this when it comes to placing pre orders for next year. The ATV/ UTV industry is the opposite, we still cannot get stock quick enough from some suppliers however my fear is once the stock situation begins to move into a positive balance we could end up with lots of stock and a lack of demand. I’m almost certain this will happen and I will be prepared for when it does.”
“We are certainly only making purchases that are essential. i.e. fulfilling customer orders but not necessarily ordering stock at this point.”
“We have just cancelled all outstanding pre-season ’22 back orders as even with a weather change, I can’t see the demand being enough to liquidate all the stock we have, let alone much more. This will obviously leave us to the vagaries of the supply chain, but that’s been the year.”
"We are still working on extended delivery times for a lot of core products so we are still placing orders and we will still take stock now if we think we will struggle to get everything we want for next season on winter stock orders."
“2023 on-going purchases are questionable. A) you need to have stock in order to supply next year. Without stock, you might as well close your doors. So like myself we will need to dig deeper financially to order a decent stock level for next year, hoping that inflation etc will improve (highly unlikely) B) Suppliers will also suffer, but they also need to think of new payment systems for dealers. They cannot expect a usual order from dealers. But due to the lack of stock, dealers may be forced to financially take a bigger risk if they are to survive next year.”
“Still a shortage of ground care machinery. Delays in receiving combines this year has resulted in less demos, which inevitably may lead to less sales during the 2023 season.”
Do you have concerns about the grass machinery you currently hold in stock?
“We certainly have enough stock now. Winter stock will certainly be slim pickings for the manufacturers.”
“Not to any great extent. There are pockets of surplus stock where demand has been unusually low all season and then there are massive shortages where we don’t even have stock for the showrooms. We are quite fortunate in that we can take in our winter stock early which has worked in our favour but I know some dealers are taking delivery of some winter stock now and it’s stock they really don’t need. Of bigger concern is what winter serving may hold for us. Knowing that customers haven’t used machines much this year and that the cost of living squeeze really will start to bite in winter with increased energy costs, I’m not sure what level of winter service work we will get.”
“We do have a lot of stock remaining and ideally at this time of the year we usually are at a low level. But stock is high as back orders have started to come in. We considered cancelling backorders as they delays got worse and the weather was too dry, however, but we expect next year to have the same scenario (apart from the weather - hopefully) so it would be better to keep the stock at the same price as we also think there will be a price increase in 2023.”
“We are definitely going to go into the back end of the year with a lot more stock than in the previous 2 years but due to the ongoing supply chain issues, this isn’t as big a worry that it would have been pre-Covid. We are pleased to have some stock as opposed to none. It does mean that our winter stock orders to our suppliers will be lower this year.”
“Wouldn’t say concern as, with issues on the supply front look to be carrying into 2023, having stock from 2022 might be a good thing. What does concern me is with PSO for 2023 where we will be asked to stock up again with no definitive delivery dates in place. To give an example we had ordered battery mowers in Oct 21 for delivery in March 22 and we have just received stock yesterday (15/08/2022) not ideal delivery time when you budgeted for Spring delivery.”
“Not really, our stock levels are good, with the odd exception. I would not call ourselves over stocked with less than 10 items on our clearance list before the end of season. In the weekly sales meeting, the team discussed that we don’t need to over order any grass machinery for the time being and wait to see where manufacturers sit on their terms for 2023 before ordering stock and only replenish what we sell.”
“No not really, as currently stock is improving and we still have demand.”
“Not really, it will sell and due to the prices increases when it does the profit margins will be healthy, providing I hold my nerve with fellow dealers and don’t lower the price to shift it.”
