“ON THE ROAD AGAIN” . . . by Jeff Hess                  

Over the past couple of weeks of dealer calls everyone is amazed at how strong snow blower sales have been.  Many dealers in the northeast, as well as the wholesale distributors that stock them, say that snow blower sales are up 80%, 90%, even 100% or more compared to last season.

Although I sell snowplows now, I have been on both sides of the desk with products such as snowplows and snow blowers.  During my sales tenure as an Area Manager of The Toro Company in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s we had many long meetings on exactly who our competition was – and the usual and obvious names always came up – Ariens, Honda, MTD, and others.  But remarkably the snow blower industry never considered any snowplow as a competitor! 

Snow blowers were and still are sold primarily via lawn and garden distributors and dealers to homeowners and contractors.  Snowplows are sold to the very same homeowners and contractors but primarily via truck equipment dealers.  But the two products, sold to identical customers, have never been sold together until Sno-Way Snowplows took the bold step in 2005 and decided to sell their snowplows primarily via the same lawn and garden dealers that have for decades sold snow blowers. 

This brilliant marketing move resulted in greatly increased snowplow sales for Sno-Way, rapid winter time products growth and sales for lawn and garden distributors and dealers alike, and the ability of lawn and garden dealers to retain their summer time customers as winter time customers as well.  This business ‘marriage’ has resulted in one of the greatest sales and marketing success stories in both the lawn and garden industry as well as the snow and ice products industry.  A few visionary manufacturers of both snowblowers  and snowplows have taken notice of this joint industry sales initiative. 

My prediction is that the most visionary, the most market responsive manufacturer(s) will eventually see the unlimited potential of controlling and servicing the same customer base, in both summer and winter, simultaneously from the same dealer base.  In other words, the first snowblower manufacturer to purchase a snowplow manufacturer (or vice versa) will capitalize where others cannot.  This is so obvious that it is absolutely incredible that it has not already happened.