Hello from Louisville! I hope nothing too dramatic has happened at home whilst I've been away? I'll check the news when I get back.
It's my privilege today to be reporting from what I believe is the largest outdoor power equipment trade show in the world, Equip Expo.
Service Dealer contingent in attendance
I've been here in Kentucky since Monday night, with owner of Service Dealer Duncan Murray-Clarke and the winners of the OPEI's competition that ran through our pages, Pete McArthur of Strathbogie Forest & Garden and Danny Lewis, landscape contracts manager at Manchester City FC.
The event proper got underway on Wednesday, with Tuesday seeing the opening welcome celebration of the show, held at Slugger Field, home of the Louisville Bats baseball team.
The gathering of dealers, end users, manufacturers and groundscare specialists from across the U.S and around the world was celebrated with fireworks, hot dogs and the odd tipple - in anticipation of the main show kicking off.
Wednesday however saw the vast inside and outside showground open its doors to the huge numbers who've travelled here to Kentucky to experience this ever-more impressive show.
Seriously impressive
As is traditional, the show was open first to a dealer-only audience for several hours on Wednesday morning. Between 9am and noon dealers were free to walk the exhibition halls, speaking openly to exhibitors, without the ears of end-user customers potentially overhearing what might be sensitive, or at least private, conversations.
I always believe this is a fabulous innovation of the show here and do wonder whether it'd be worth any of our shows at home adopting? Pete McArthur certainly thought it was a good idea, liking the ability to get around exhibitors before the aisles became too crowded. He was also impressed by each stand having a decent number of the suppliers' reps manning the exhibit - meaning no hanging around if you wanted a chat.
These dealer-only hours used to be a late afternoon thing, that involved beer and food being distributed on stands. Whilst great obviously, it used to perhaps feel less business-y than holding them first thing. Don't get me wrong, the beers and food still came out in the afternoon on Wednesday this week - but this time all the end-user visitors were there too, enjoying the party atmosphere!
These first hours brought it back to me, what the sheer scale of this endeavour is - and this is before the outside demo area even opened its doors at noon. I believe the show was completely sold out this year, for the first time ever. This was clear as there was no wasted space anywhere. No strategically placed tables and chairs in empty stand space; no wide areas of nothing - it was full to bursting.
And then once you've just about become used to the level on which the show is operating, they open the doors to the outside demo area - and the footprint goes stratospheric!
They have even managed to make the demo ground better than when I last visited in 2019. It's larger, has sculpted walkways now making navigating easier and they've included a utility vehicle demo track. Our guys who were visting the show for the first time were blown away by just how good it truly is. Although the level of dust kicked up from all the cutting, driving and digging place on day two was something to behold!
And I won't mention the prototype mower that caught on fire late Wednesday afternoon, leading to an evacuation and the demo area closing early! All was dealt with though and was back up and running as normal yesterday morning.
What was seen?
In this Update today, we have a few short films that hopefully convey a flavour of what was going on at the show. Keep an eye out as there will be more content like this to enjoy in our Equip Expo Digital Special Report that's coming soon.
In terms of products on display there were zero-turns galore - many of which I suspect we won't ever see on our shores. STIHL for example launched a whole range of the mowers.
Whilst of course there were many examples of electrification of machinery options - or indeed automation - the impression our group came away with, was that petrol (or gasoline as we say here), still has a very firm place in the U.S outdoor power equipment sector.
I spoke to the OPEI's President Kris Kiser about this yesterday during our chat that will form part of the upcoming Digital Special Report and he told me that gasoline still has a significant role to play in the future of the industry - despite the moves in California to ban the sale of gas-powered kit.
Leaving thoughts
Upon leaving, I spoke to our contingent what their opinions were regarding the most interesting and exciting development for the industry that they saw during their time at the show?
The guys appeared to be in agreement that it was what Kress are doing with their Cybersystem, allowing a battery to fully recharge from empty to full capacity in 8 minutes. As the company's Todd Zimmerman said in his presentation, this offers professional end-users a genuine "reason for change" to move for the first time to a battery-powered machine from traditional fuel. He said in developing their range, the company wanted to compete with petrol products, not with other cordless machines.
The phrase is overused, but in this case it does seems to apply - what Kress showed here in Louisville, and recently introduced to UK dealers, is a game changer.
In fact you can see below the bold, bold statement the company chose to put front and centre on their stand -
We'll have much more about Equip in the upcoming Digital Special Report - including coverage of the panel that Pete and Dan spoke on brilliantly yesterday, comparing the U.S and UK markets.
In the meantime, I'm off to the airport to return to what I assume is a stable, calm and quiet UK.
