LOOKING back over more than 25 years of back-issues of Service Dealer (don’t worry it’s not an obsession, I do have a life!), the impact of the weather on our industry has dominated many of our lead stories.
Too dry, too wet, too hot, too cold, hose-pipe bans and all manner of weather-related factors that have turned the screw on our selling seasons in the past. The tipping point of the season has always seemed to me to be the Chelsea Flower Show. Although, the event has largely been abandoned by machinery suppliers in recent years, we all used to congregrate in mid-May at the show and complain that three months in (a) the season hadn’t really started or (b) the season was probably done and dusted.
For anyone writing a business plan for the garden machinery industry factoring in the weather conditions best suited to a stonking selling season, then 2014 (at least to where we are now in mid-May) would come very close to being a Perfect 10.
However, that in itself provides real challenges.
We are coming off the back of one of the longest recessions in modern history, Spring and early summer weather conditions during the past two or three years have been less than ideal, all of which must have injected caution into the forecasts made by manufacturers and suppliers way back last year for the current season.
With the vast majority of machines now made in faraway lands, the tap cannot be turned off and on at will.
Which means that dealers will have to be equally creative and on-the-ball during this good selling season as they have to be when they can hardly give machines away because of the weather.
Creative in being able to switch sales to what is available when some of the more popular models run short. Creative in making sure that they maximise margins in this internet age when the pressure on prices has been ratcheted up. Creative in looking ahead and planning for what could yet be a long summer, when the heat has gone out of the demand.
In the past, there has been admirable creativity and flair amongst the specialist dealer network to overcome adversity. Those same qualities are absolutely essential to managing the business when famine turns to feast – and when pauses for reflection and thinking time are in short supply.
