The new look, redesigned Service Dealer magazine goes bi-monthly in 2014 with a host of new and familiar features.
First issue will contain:
2014 STATE OF THE INDUSTRY REPORT HERITAGE AWARDS PROFILE OF DAVID WITHERS LIVES REMEMBERED BTME PREVIEW LAMMA PREVIEW DIARY OF A SEASON + 2014 EVENT PLANNER
WISE WORDS The views from the late Mike Barnfield are as relevant today as they were in 1990
THOSE who have been in the garden machinery trade for a while will remember Honda’s Mike Barnfield. Mike, who joined from Wolseley Webb in 1980, was largely responsible for developing the Honda Power Equipment dealer network during the 1980s and early 90s from a starting range of just three lawnmowers.
Mike left Honda in 1993, and sadly passed away in 2009 at the age of 72.
In a new feature, Lives Remembered, for the next Service Dealer magazine out on 5 January, we look back more fully on Mike Barnfield’s impact on the industry.
For the article, I have been re-reading interviews we did with Mike - and was struck by the remarkable revelance of what he had to say then, to the industry as we know it today. And remember, all this was in the heyday of the sheds - and before the influence of the internet.
Even as a supplier, Mike was prepared to say that he thought that the relationship between manufacturer and dealer was weighted too far in favour of the manufacturer. He advised dealers, “Do more research on your suppliers to satisfy yourself about their long-term policies, in order to judge your long term stability and profitablity in the franchise.”
That was from an interview published in June 1990. I guess it is also a two-way street, in that suppliers ought to apply the same scrutiny to the dealers they appoint.
In other words, if the model of products being sold through a recognised sales and service dealer network is to continue, then there must be openness, transparency and clarity about the dealer/supplier relationship, particularly with the added challenges of the internet, around which there is too much muddled and fuzzy strategy on all sides at the moment.
