Welcome back to your Service Dealer Weekly Update and may I offer you a belated Happy New Year!
I do hope everyone managed to enjoy some time of relaxation and peacefulness over the Christmas period. I imagine with the extreme weather conditions that the country is experiencing this week, our agricultural and commercial machinery dealer readers haven't exactly been able to quietly ease themselves back into the swing of things? One suspects that demands from customers who are using kit in farming and professional settings, have been immediately felt.
January always provides these conditions, of course, so I suspect our readers are hardly surprised. It's also traditionally a busy month due to a couple of major trade shows vying for your time away from the business. For the ag side, it's LAMMA next week at the NEC - and the following week for dealers in the golf and turf sector, BTME takes place in Harrogate. Members of the Service Dealer team will be at both shows, so please do say hi if you see us walking the aisles.
Also traditionally for this first Update after the break, we take a quick look back today at what stories caught our readers' attention during the preceding twelve months? This is always a interesting exercise for me as I research and compile this piece, both from a purely numbers game to see what was opened the most, but more importantly as a means to consider the mood and priorities of the dealer network.
Looking down the list, I think what we can take away from 2025's most read is that it was a year of consolidation and change - which is a bit different to the top stories we presented this time last year. Then, six out of the ten stories concerned dealerships closing their doors for the final time, making for rather downbeat reading. There are a couple entires along those lines in our article today - but literally just the two. Mostly they are about developments and evolutions in the network.
Dealer acquisitions, territory expansions, branch restructures, new appointments and manufacturer partnerships all featured prominently. Compared with some previous years (and most certainly with last year) the list feels less dominated by contraction and more about a sector adapting and, arguably, planning for the long term.
It seems a fair assumption to make that the continued interest by you, our dealer readers, in consolidation and expansion suggests the network is watching closely how others are addressing issues such as succession and future-proofing their operations. If that is indeed the case, then this first issue of 2026 could well feature some top ten stories this time next year as we're packed with news of this kind today.
There are two dealers coming together to focus on a tractor brand, Merlo are expanding their network, Lloyd have become dual-brand dealers, Browns' Kubota coverage has expanded, and Ibbets have taken on a new franchise. All of these stories reflect the on-going evolution that's under way in the network right now.
We at Service Dealer shall of course continue to the cover all industry developments for you throughout the year. We do this via our Weekly Update, the magazine, our social channels, special reports, dealer toolkits and our conference. As we say each year, this is your journal, so please do keep us informed with what is going on at your dealership and in your business. We are guided by you with the stories we cover, so if there's something you feel we should know about, please always feel free to drop me a line. We continually want to feature as many dealer voices as we can. So don't be shy.
We look forward to once again navigating a surprising, exciting and successful year with all of you.
