Hi Jack,
I recently contacted Stanford's here in Adelaide who are the sole seller in Adelaide and they haven't even got one and believe me they are a huge mower outlet, actually the largest in Adelaide.
They can only sell Greenfield's ride on's as they tried for a while to sell their push mowers and gave up as they were seen as a Chinese knock off by purchasers as when they did have one on the display floor Domestic purchasers didn't recognise them as a known brand and constantly required to have the "Branding" situation constantly explained. Basically they got sick of wasting time on people who really wanted a Victa, Rover or Honda solely based on Reputation alone. They don't disagree that it's a good machine, but Greenfield sadly have absolutely no credibility in the push mower market. BTW Stanford's have a good re pore with Greenfield's but as they are seen as a ride on company they can't make any headway into the push mower market. Basically it's the irony of idiot purchasers.
BTW an Enduro Longreach is $799 here as well with a 3 week delivery wait from Queensland.
That's bloody terrible !!!
I see that there is a distinct problem between Greenfield and their Outlets with a lack of retailers that they have on their list, but the ones they do have are all the really larger style outlets that are dedicated to them in just ride on's only and not push mowers where they dedicate their domestic business to Victa and Rover etc. and if Greenfield were to approach smaller retailers to sell their push mowers, this would inevitably upset the relationship between them and their big shot retailers and again inadvertently affect their ride on sales overall.
I myself have been in this same situation as a rep for a large car care product company that originally had all our products in a smaller style Auto Part chain stores and these stores spent a lot of time educating buyers as to why they should purchase our product. They made fabulous GP out of our product and the relationship was fantastic. In the back ground our company did a deal with a large discount department store that was chasing us for 10 years and finally a deal was struck. Well did the feathers fly when that news came out and boy was I caught in the crossfire with me being on the cold face of the business. It's an allegiance think and everyone feels that they are owed something for their years of dedicated service and thus I feel this is much the same situation that has occurred between Victa and it's domestic retailers and Greenfield and its more commercial based retailers. The retailers don't want to blur the lines and as such are making good GP out of both separate sectors. If you cross the lines then things just get awkward and thus why Greenfield can not make any inroads into the domestic market. They are caught between a rock and a hard place I feel.
It's all really sad as I would have to say that the Greenfield would have to be the BEST domestic mower on the market and should outsell all the competition, hands down.
BUT, it's hard to sell a secret isn't it ???
Cheers,
BB.
