Farm machinery dealers are hoping to offset recent declines in equipment sales by expanding the services they provide to producers.
After six consecutive years of strong growth, year-over-year sales of new equipment declined by as much as 25 percent for dealers in parts of Western Canada in 2014, according to John Schmeiser, CEO of the newly-formed Western Equipment Dealers Association.
At the same time, with growth in precision agriculture and increasingly sophisticated equipment, dealers are seeing opportunities to provide more services, offering help with agronomy, variable rate technology and farm management.
“The revenues generated from additional services will certainly offset any slowdown on equipment sales, but having said that, this is probably a big part of our future,” says Schmeiser in the interview below. “It’s a whole new future area of business. Because of the relationship we’ve established with producers over the years, it’s a natural that we now go into this space.”
That shift to focusing on providing services in addition to iron is one of the main topics being discussed at WEDA’s conference in Regina this week.
The association was formed after the merger of the Canada West Equipment Dealers Association and the SouthWestern Association on September 1st, 2014. It has around 1,000 equipment dealer members in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, as well as Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.
Schmeiser previews the conference and discusses trends in the machinery market in this audio interview:
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