Now in his 30th official year working for the 112-year old dealership — representing the 4th generation — Andy More became president of More Farm Stores in 2013 and has expanded from 1 to 5 locations (4 in Indiana and 1 in Ohio) since. He shared his thoughts on industry challenges, tech training, operations, the role of the North American Equipment Dealers Assn. (NAEDA) and its OPE Dealer Council and the family business.
More Farm Stores sells Kubota, Toro, Land Pride, Stihl and Bad Boy mowers. More says about 75% of the dealership’s business is commercial contractors, with the other 30% made up of homeowners.
How are you recruiting new techs and are you able to keep them once you get them in house?
More: We try to utilize Kubota University, we utilize NAEDA with a lot of their training paths and also NCM Associates, which is the Spader group. All three have been phenomenal for our training.
Kubota University is what we use for tech training and it's been really good. I think just offering an attractive place to work really helps. We have air-conditioned shops now which makes a big difference on keeping guys. Paying appropriately, which also means charging appropriately is a big part of that. We've had really good luck on retaining the guys we want to retain. Some of my technicians have been here 20 plus years and we have several A level technicians who've come here from different ag shops. Part of the ag economy being down has opened up those resources quite a bit.
What's working? What are the primary growth drivers and what are your points of pride?
More: Post-COVID, we call this time period a COVID hangover. Revenue wise, COVID marked the best years any of us have had. If you couldn't make money during COVID, you probably shouldn't be doing what we do. Now that we're coming off of that, everything's hard again. We're relearning the business, we're relearning the new normals, trying to readjust to really 2019 sales levels as far as units go. We've learned we have to work a lot harder than we did to make less money. But I think what's driving success for us is that we have a really good dedication to providing an uncommon customer experience. Everybody says customer first, but not everybody does it.
Our goal in our meetings is to ask: “Are we uncommon? Are we doing more than our peers, doing more than our competitors?” We spend a lot of time studying the industry, spend a lot of time with NCM Associates. That's been fantastic. Kubota construction equipment has really come on strong and the Kubota construction products have really carried us through this post-COVID time. Whereas going into COVID, we were probably 70% turf focused and today we're probably 70% dirt focused. That's a big change for us.
You asked about pride points, the 5th generation with my son being here, that's a big one. The other thing that we focus on, and I think we do it right, is that our goal is to be the most honest, most trusted dealer that Kubota, Toro, Bad Boy, Stihl have. I think our guys do a really nice job of that.
What's working is sticking to policies, making policies that make sense, policies that people understand. I have an operations manager, one of the things he brought to the table was a change diagram. That was really eye-opening to me. It makes so much sense that everybody knows why we are making a change. What is this change going to do? How do we get there? Do we have the right people to make the change, the right tools? Are we following through? For every change I tried to make for the 30 years prior that fell flat, you can look at that and think, "That's why it didn't work. It wasn't that it was the wrong idea, it was the wrong implementation." Having the humility to hire people who can do things that you can't is probably the biggest step to getting past those. Nobody's good at everything, you just have to fill the seats with people who are good.
How do you approach inventory management?
More: The first thing I would say is I'm scared to talk about it because I think once you think you got it figured out, you find out you're wrong. Inventory management is an art and a science together. We have to look at our market share, we have to look at sales history, we have to look at market trends. Some of these manufacturers are offering extended terms, extended discounts. You have to leverage all of that together to make wise decisions. One of the things that we've probably gotten better at more than anything else over this time is not giving in to manufacturer pressure. We need to stock what's good for More Farm Stores, not what's good for the manufacturer. We're on a plan right now that I want 6 months of sales in the pipeline.
During COVID, we were 12-15 months in the pipeline but I think 6 months is a healthier place to be and makes more sense. That's our goal. We're not there, we're close and getting closer to it every day. It keeps it fresh. We're not paying interest and we're going to have some issues. But it’s being a good dealer that's honest, that works well with others. Good dealer relations between dealerships really helps because inventory transfers are going to be important going forward.
As part of the leadership team on the board of NAEDA's OPE Dealer Council, started 3 years ago, can you offer an update on priorities and progress and OPE industry impact?
More: We've been a member of NAEDA since before I started, and I've been here for over 30 years. A lot of dealers don't really understand yet all of the value that being a part of an association brings in the outdoor power equipment world. In the ag world, dealers get it because ag has gone through some major shifts, the consolidation has been much bigger, a lot of things impact them more. All of those associations merging into NAEDA has brought strength in numbers, but also in resources. With NAEDA, I always look to them for advice on sales tax law, dock fees are getting to be a big one, trucking DOT laws, different things that affect us that we are not large enough to have an HR staff and an IT staff and a trucking staff.
Being able to utilize them for those resources, both legal and technical advice has been huge. When they asked about doing it for outdoor power equipment, I was very interested just because those things are starting to trickle down into the Toro business and the Bad Boy business and contractual changes, etc. NAEDA just does a really nice job of defending the dealer and also educating the dealer, saying, "You may not like this change, but you have to understand that it's good for the manufacturer, and your manufacturers have to stay in business in order for us to stay in business." We can get frustrated with our manufacturers, but we also have to step back and say, "More Farm Store wouldn't exist without these manufacturers, so we need to make sure the manufacturer is healthy in order to be healthy with us."NAEDA does a great job of mediating those conversations.
With the OPE council, its primary purpose has been, at least from my perspective, to first help the manufacturers like Toro, Briggs & Stratton, Stihl and other manufacturers to understand the value they bring to the table. I don't think those manufacturers understood that. Now manufacturers like Toro are recognizing the power NAEDA has and the value that they bring to both sides of the table.
NAEDA doesn't exist just to defend the dealer from the manufacturer, they strengthen that relationship and help the manufacturers understand the perspective of the dealer, and in turn, they help the dealer understand the perspective of the manufacturer. That has been, in my opinion, the No. 1 goal. We've made a lot of progress with manufacturers. Not all of them have been excited about it, but I can specifically speak of Toro, having been involved there. Toro's eyes have been open to what this brings and how this organization can help strengthen their dealer network.
I'm also utilizing NCM Associates, which everyone knows as Spader and that leadership path, and I've got my operations manager doing the Dealer Institute, which is NAEDA's path, and then we compare notes. They're very similar, very good and they’ve each got their advantages, but it's nice for us to have both paths and compare.
How does the family legacy impact your leadership and the dealership’s plans?
More: Asking where we’re headed is a very difficult question. The weight of history is heavy. Unfortunately, my father passed away last year. All of the prior family is gone, which unfortunately relieves pressure. But there is the pressure of wanting to still do it right and thinking, “How would grandpa think of this decision, or great grandpa or my dad?” so those thoughts are very active every single day.”
As the mergers and acquisitions continue, I think it's very hard for a dealer to stay the same size. You're forced into growth, not everyone, but pretty much, just because of the competition coming in there. I hope to see us continue to grow. I hope that someday it's what my son wants to do. Right now, it's what he's doing and he's very good at it. He's a great young man. I don't want him to feel pressure that he has to take it, or that I'll be disappointed if he doesn’t. We're in a probably 5-year window of “Let's just see what happens.” The good news about that is we've got some different succession planning if he chooses not to. I don't feel like it every day, but I'm moderately young, at 51, so we’ve got some time. Right now it's continuing to try to build a company that has great value if we either decide to do something different or to turn it over to the next generation.”
I don't know that the decisions we've made and the growth are always the right ones. But we do the calculated risk of working to research it, go through and see what's happened in the past, what history tells us and then make calculated decisions. So far, we've had luck with those.
