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MARKETPLACE
Ride-on Mowers
Too soon
to let rip with
ride-ons?
Pandemic-driven pinch points have meant that demand for ride-on mowers has been outstripping supply for some time now. Can suppliers cope? asks Steve Bohling...
THE RIDE-ON MOWER
marketplace continues to be
dominated by a select few brands, unlike the battery lawnmower market which has a significant number of players and growing.
You can find out about Husqvarna’s general outdoor power outlook on page
2 of this issue, but for specific ride-on commentary we turned to Steelfort with its Cub Cadet and Rover brands and Masport.
Clearly ride-ons are in demand and New Zealand is a small but busy market.
But, with overseas manufacturers of parts and mowers experiencing abnormally high demand in their own domestic markets, along with erratic component supply, demand for ride-ons in the New Zealand market has in many cases outstripped supply for some time now.
“Backwater”?
A healthy backwater if so...
Gavin Lowndes, General Manager at Steelfort admits: “We are always in a backwater situation here, but we have put a lot of product into the market in the last six months, no doubt about it.”
Backwater or not, demand is holding
up, despite a range of naysaying pundits, he says: “We are not getting cancellations, and no-one is ringing up saying, ‘I’ve got so much stock, I can’t pay my bills.’ That’s just not happening,” says Gavin.
Steelfort has had “a very good year” with its flagship Cub Cadet brand.
“No doubt about it,” says Gavin Lowndes. “We’ve had a very good year. The last few years, we have put a lot of money and resources into Cub Cadet branding and that’s certainly paying off.
“Plus, Cub Cadet has rolled out some really good innovations in the last couple of
years, which have gone particularly well.” Cub Cadet for example also now has an
electric ride-on model, an initial shipment of which has gone down well here but will benefit from a fresh launch in the New Year.
“The lithium market in ride-on mowers is still in its infancy,” says Gavin Lowndes.
“The products are expensive [and] the gap is too wide between petrol and lithium for lithium to make really significant progress at this point in time.
“I think if a ride-on was one and a half to two times the price of a petrol equivalent, then the market would take off,” he believes, adding: “At the moment, it’s probably
two and a half times the equivalent petrol machine.”
Gavin is however optimistic that this situation will resolve itself: “As the volume goes up overseas then the price will come back a bit.
“Going back a few years, when we first got into power tools, it was a real lesson for us, because every time we bought a shipment, the price went down!”
And the same is presumed to benefit battery ride-ons in due course.
Still talking cost, this time last year, Steelfort released a new lower price Cub Cadet model, the LX547, which established a new lower opening price point for the brand.
Originally pitched as a promotional model, the LX547 sold so well that it’s now a standard part of Steelfort’s range and continues to sell well.
Presumably the aim was to expand the range of people who might consider a Cub Cadet ride-on if it was at a more accessible price point?
“It brought a whole lot of people into the market who possibly would have gone
012 NZOUTDOORPOWEREQUIPMENT SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER2022
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