You got one thing wrong concerning Stihl and John Deere. Stihl hasn't spent a penny to go into John Deere. They've been in some John Deere dealerships for years. JD went to Stihl and asked them to be their main supplier of small handheld power equipment. Stihl jumped on it as any small power equipment maker would.
directly out the mouth of Peter Stihl talking about marketing.
"the success of Stihl is based on unique marketing strategies. Virtually all of our primary competitors have compromised their retail distribution strategies to accommodate mass merchants. While this approach may offer some near term advantages by way increased sales distribution, the long term effect can be a loss of identity and competitive uniqueness, this in not the Stihl way"
I think what that means is Stihl will not fall for the fast buck at the price of giving up the reputation they have built. Whats your take on what he means in that piece????
To me any business spending any effort is measured in money. Time spent organizing the JD deal is done by Stihl employee's therefore money is spent. That time would have been spent in other targeted area's had the JD opportunity not appeared on the horizon...Therefore Stihl "bought" into the plan and changed the direction of efforts by "investing" the time of some of its employee's. Hence my statement.
I agree with Mr. Stihl's statement and your analysis of that statement. The difference between Stihl and others companies is who owns and therefore sets priority...I think I posted something along these lines a few pages back relative to the appearance of Stihl's corperate culture. It is different than the typical.
Stihl the company seems to want to be in the higher quality segment of the market place..and thats probably another reason the JD opportunity was attractive. Their company philosophies appear to be similar. In addition the rise of the Husqvarna "Power Equipment" Stores are competition to the old John Deere Small Tractor/ Home and Garden type places. John Deere and Stihl NEED each other.
Husqvarna has channeled its lower cost products thru retail distribution lines protecting their name hiding behind Poulan...and LEVERAGING their name in the next level stores like TSC and Lowes. They have kept the true professional lines to be sold at either saw specific dealers or these "Power Equipment" dealers. A good stratagy. They have built a tremendous band width of sales channels, very powerful stuff;....MY fear is Husqvarna will creap to the dark side and follow others into the abiss of high volume, low margin, consumer saws because that approach requires less engineering/marketing/support & therefore better on the ballance sheet and do exactly as Mr. Peter Stihl prophesises. They would loose their identity first, and then because of the high cost of engineering & support vs. return, drop the Pro lines second. This hasn't happened yet...
What is Husqvarna's identity anyway? (vs. Stihl) They started as a firearm's manufacturer..hence the "gunsite" logo. They branched into everything from Sewing machines to motorcycles..got bought out by an appliance manufacturer..the motorcycle line was ejected to Italy to be morphed into first Cagiva, and then back to Husqvarna under Italian ownership; to be bought out by BMW the motorcycle company! The saws got spit out of the appliance company along with all the other brands labels...and now they have morphed into a full line power equipment company building everything from lawn mowers to chainsaws!
Stihl is still Stihl. A parallel company in spirit is KTM of the motorcycle world. Their moto is to build "ready to race" competition motorcycles. They have. They will for a long time. They hold their racing heritage and identy dear to their corperate hearts. As Stihl does its history in the Chainsaw world.
Having said that...and you want to look into the future...do a little reseach on a company named Autodesk. Its a real interesting story, one that a person interested in marketing should research and understand as it will play out over and over again in market after market. Even in this market.