Spent much of this week in Northern Ireland where the dealers I met all seemed to have a different tale to tell.   Unfortunately I didn’t make it south of the border to West Meath where the lawnmower dealer is also the local undertaker, and where visiting reps often have to perch on a coffin in order to do business!

Nevertheless, I met a successful father and son garden machinery business started by a retired bank manager. Another long-standing lawnmower dealer whose premises had been blown up twice, before the last rebuild was also burned down – and who has just had his best week’s selling mowers of the year when a new Screwfix opened opposite.

Then there was the husband and wife team who sell 190 lawn tractors and ride-ons a year, and finally to the Belfast garden machinery specialist where the showroom manager was previously manager of B&Q’s largest branch in NI which sold £1 million worth of mowers each year – and who also managed branches of Comet and Next (I’ll be fleshing-out the stories in the next issue of Service Dealer mag).

I was there the week after ‘The Twelfth’ (of July) and the height of the marching season, but the over-riding impression is of a country increasingly at ease with itself. Of growing prosperity, of bustling market towns and the increasing sophistication of the city of Belfast which is now attracting significant visitor numbers.  All a far cry from the years between the 1970s and early 1990’s when the Troubles dominated everyday life - and the headlines home and abroad.

Of course, it is fertile territory for grass, bigger than average gardens and a conducive climate for vigorous growth. And whilst I obviously was only able to visit a small cross section of dealers, I was struck by the busy showrooms, the enthusiastic use of social media to attract local customers and the fact that dealers generally stuck to their immediate ‘patch’.  All I met had excellent websites but none attempted to sell online, they only used their website, and often Facebook, to promote themselves and their business – locally.

That, coupled with a growing trend of bringing people into garden machinery dealerships who have cut their teeth in other, often very different businesses, appears to be providing a freshness that is both palpable and profitable - and perhaps provides lessons that to dealers everywhere.