FEATURE STORY
Equipment
Trends
2 13
Photo provided by Honda Power Equipment
Magnifying glass illustration ©istockphoto.com/procurator
First article in a two-part series
O
utdoor Power Equipment's sister
publication Landscape and Irrigation recently asked a wide range
of equipment manufacturers and suppliers
to share their insights about the equipment market, and how the trends they are
seeing will impact your equipment decisions. Their observations were as follows:
What trends are you seeing with
regard to equipment for the professional landscape and lawn care
markets?
Everybody is looking for the best possible product with the most features, but
under tight budgets, pricing is very sensitive.
— Brad Unruh, senior product manager,
Excel Industries
Trends in term of design for small
manufactures like Turf Teq are the need to
listen and understand customer demands,
and design only the products they are willing to spend their money to purchase. Listening closely to what your customers are
willing to spend money on is more important than ever. A trend in manufacturing is
an increase in the use of technology. As
technological advances become more affordable, manufactures are implementing it
into their production as a way to become
more efficient and reduce labor costs. In
terms of sales, we are seeing customers
purchasing items that will show a quick
ROI — no more wish lists. If it will pay
back in less than a year, buy it: if not, it is
not a necessary purchase.
— James R. Day, managing partner,
Turf Teq
I think one important trend in play
across the industry is the concept of doing
more using fewer resources. This is manifesting itself in the innovative new power
plant options available, both in gasolineand propane-fueled models. The widespread adoption of Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI) on our zero-turn models has
dramatically increased fuel economy for
contractors — a critical concern in this
time of $4/gallon gasoline. And we have
been selling as many of the new propaneEFI Lazer Z S-Series zero-turn riders as
we can build. Now that we have engines
built specifically for propane, such as the
new Kohler EFI engine we're using, the
performance is virtually indistinguishable
from a gasoline-powered unit. And with
much greater fuel economy than converted, carbureted propane engines, this
new engine can run for more than seven
hours on one tank of fuel — a significant
benefit for contractors. Factor in the cost
of propane fuel, which is relatively lower
than gasoline, and the value proposition of
this new model is especially compelling.
— Daryn Walters, Exmark director of
marketing
20 O U T D O O R P O W E R E Q U I P M E N T
www.outdoorpowerequipment.com
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