Page 9 - OPE JULY 2020

INDUSTRY
The State of Play
Towards a
new normal for the outdoor power channel?
Everyone by now will be familiar with the term “pent-up demand”, having experienced the post-lockdown surge in demand for outdoor power products and servicing. Has it lasted? And what is the state of play around the industry? Steve Bohling reports.
North Shore has been busy, but slowed down again in July.
“It’s just a seasonal business,” he says. “We are supposed to be quieter at the moment,” however adding that the drain on cashflow caused by April’s lockdown is some cause for concern.
Proud Hamiltonian Peter Banks at STIHL SHOP Te Rapa says lockdown was “veryconcerning”,partlybecauseitwas nothing like the GFC 10 years ago: “You can’t say, well, last time we did this, because nobody’s ever had this before. And to be forced to shut was a scary thought.”
Still, says Peter: “We came through it. Most businesses were booming in May – and if you weren’t then something was probably not quite right.
“Talking to a lot of different businesses out there, everybody said their May was just awesome, which was very pleasing, because there was a big concern coming out of it that everyone was going to just go into their shell.”
Having experienced a rush immediately before lockdown, Matthew Nelson and Action Equipment Te Puke have been seeing both positive and negative in their area, post-lockdown: “There’s one side that talks
about how many boys are being laid off and the number of industries that are severely impacted.
“Then there’s the other side of businesses that have been busy. We’ve come out the other side being quite busy, which is nice.”
Brad Graham at Tomo’s Saws & Mowers, Taupo, admits “April was a write-off but we had a record May. May was just nuts.”
Nuts almost to the point of overload, in fact, requiring the store’s plans for a looser Alert Level 2 to be brought forward to cope with demand across the board from domestic, commercial and forestry customers.
For Marty Leach and STIHL SHOP Napier, the March-April lockdown came on the back of a “very disappointing” January and February, due in part to the forestry downturn with exports being put on hold.
Still says Marty, he worked away quietly solving as many customers’ problems
as possible during lockdown and, come May-June, was pleased to see a serious uplift in demand.
In terms of payback for their many lockdown favours, Marty and team are now seeing “a little bit of a sense that people are
AT THE END of May, ASB Chief Economist, Nick Tuffley, summed up where he thought New Zealand
was economically, post-lockdown. There would be three stages:
• Survivingthecrisis.
• Adaptinginaperiodoftransition.
• Reimaginingitselfintothe“newnormal”. Nick Tuffley’s “crisis period” was
May-June, where we’re “surviving the impacts of the lockdown and reopening when ongoing restrictions, behavioural changes, and potential for spending caution mean revenue streams are highly uncertain.”
“It has been – and will continue to be – a time of swiftly making hard decisions.”
“Stage 2 – transition” could last up to a year, he says, during which time “persistent and permanent shifts in behaviour will become more apparent”.
This will be “a period in which being adaptable and flexible will be important”. And finally the “new normal” will be
about supply chains focusing “more on reliability and resilience, favouring local sources more, even if at higher cost”.
“The importance of fully leveraging technology has been starkly highlighted, and will change how we shop, work, and influence where we live.”
What stage are we at? And how does any of this apply to outdoor power?
How was lockdown for you?
After a month-plus of Level 4 lockdown, self-isolation and social distancing, New Zealand’s “team of five million” let rip with their spending.
Having seen not much more than the insides of their very own bubbles during
late March and April, in May and June Kiwis spent up large on home and garden products.
How did the outdoor power industry cope with this explosion in demand?
With a pronounced shift in spending towards online retailers during May and June, how have STIHL and Husqvarna’s online e-commerce programmes fared?
In the second week of July, finally back in the office, I called around a range of servicing dealers and some key suppliers to get a handle on their experiences.
Working my way from north to south, the consensus that April was just “a big hole”, with only the most positive dealers being so bold as to suggest that May or June may have made up for an all but negative April.
Mauritz Venter says the workshop at Gardening Aids Glenfield on Auckland’s
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JULY 2020 NZ OUTDOOR POWER EQUIPMENT 09
Launched around the time we were going into and coming out of lockdown respectively, STIHL and Husqvarna’s new e-commerce platforms have been busy driving customers in-store.