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www.landscapeirrigation.com Landscape and Irrigation March 2015 23 Special Feature the consumer. Hopefully they will look to take some of those savings and upgrade or update their mower. A few years were down for contractors, especially 2008, 2009 and even into 2010. And I think a lot of contractors hung onto machines for a year or two too long. But these guys are back and looking to upgrade their ma- chines. — Brad Unruh, senior product manager, Excel Industries, manufacturer of Hustler Turf Equipment and BigDog Mowers. The Outdoor Power Equipment Industry is rapidly growing in an otherwise stag- nant economy. With all the benefits of Mean Green Mowers, we are seeing greatly increasing demand for pure electric mow- ers. Mean Green Mower sales have been at least doubling every year and we expect this year to be even better. — Joe Conrad, president, Mean Green Mowers Recent economic indicators are pointing to solid growth in the coming year. Both employment and consumer confidence are up, which is a good sign. If the econo- my keeps improving, mower sales should improve along with it as landscapers re- place aging equipment and invest in their businesses with more versatile equip- ment. — Mike Simmon, communications spe- cialist, Grasshopper 2015 is looking to be a good year, as it looks like fuel costs will bring down oper- ating expenses, which should help equip- ment sales. Also, the lower unemployment rate means that more people are working. This should also help fuel more work for most commercial landscapers and, in turn, drive more equipment purchases. — Tony Weber, product specialist man- ager, Schiller Grounds Care, Inc. Since most outdoor power product sales are tied closely to general U.S. economic indicators, it is somewhat difficult to pre- dict what 2015 will hold for lawn mower sales. That being said, the industry pre- dicts small-but-steady growth in the lawn mower marketplace for the next year. — Alex Torre, manager, marketing and market research, Honda Power Equipment Among other factors, mower sales are mostly dependent on rainfall, the general economy, new home sales and fuel prices. The current state of U.S. economy is very robust with record low unemployment rates, fuel prices at record lows, and new home sales rebounding back to healthy levels. Therefore, 2015 looks like it will be a very good year for mower sales. While precipitation is still an unknown, the current fuel prices will definitely be the catalyst to robust mower sales for both homeowners and professionals — hom- eowners will likely have more discretion- ary income to purchase, and professionals should have better profitability to upgrade their fleets. All in all, we expect to see an- other year of robust double-digit growth in mower sales in the year ahead. — Rajesh Joshi, Kubota turf product marketing director As the economy continues to stabilize, we're very bullish on the market and its potential for growth in the coming year. We believe the industry, and specifically the ZTR segment, is going to continue to expand; and we're confident that the di- verse lineup of Altoz products and acces- sories will enable us to outpace the indus- try in terms of growth rates. — Karl Bjorkman, sales and marketing director, Altoz In 2015, we expect to see continued growth in the outdoor power equipment industry as a whole. Successful landscape contrac- tors will continue to better understand the value of technology and data to helping them do their jobs more efficiently. This is true in all areas of a contractor's business — not just with equipment. — Daryn Walters, director of market- ing, Exmark The ZTR industry has been on the rise the past 10 years, and in 2015 we expect this trend to continue. — Brice Hill, product manager, Dixie Chopper Our plan is for another robust year for sales. Our dealers and distributors report a fairly healthy market as compared to years past. — Bill Shea, vice president of com- mercial sales, Briggs & Stratton Products Group Editor's note: Responses are presented in the order in which they were received. LI Photo by hustler turf equiPment Photo by ferris