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Dealer Moving Ahead In Good Position
Despite recession, Diamond Power focuses
on customer needs and satisfaction.
By Dan Shell
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ROSEBURG, Ore.
If a lawn and garden dealership was a jet liner, then dealer Tony Lane, owner of Diamond Power, is wondering when his business will get to cruising altitude. Lane purchased the existing dealership less than five years ago, relocated it, consolidated and added product lines, absorbed another dealership’s inventory, then remodeled a building at a great new location only to have to endure almost a year of local bridge construction that cut off a major route for customers.
And now, with all the critical dealership pieces firmly in place, the economy has turned down, giving Diamond Power another tough situation to navigate.
“We’re still in spring out here, and even for the recession, our numbers look good,” Lane says. “This month is a bit down, but the first few months of the year were on track with last year.”
But he still sees signs of a slowdown: less of a backlog of service work orders, and he’s cut product lines that haven’t been selling well. On the positive side, Lane believes he’s seen much more firewood cutting activity during the past winter, and a lot of customers are talking about putting in new gardens. Also, a large local church that was contracting out its lawn care recently bought 15 pieces of equipment after bringing the yard care work in-house.
“We keep adding new customers to our database, so we’re trying to stay upbeat and positive,” Lane adds. “I think we’re in a good position overall.”
History
Lane also operates LimbWalker Tree Service, which runs 15+ chain saws. He had long done business with Diamond Power at its former location across the Umpqua River in east Roseburg. Then, with its owners looking to retire, Lane bought the 10-year-old business in 2005. The dealership focused on service, with an open shop philosophy of working on anything.
“We started winning customers one repair job at a time,” Lane says.
The business struggled some after he bought it, Lane remembers, and he looked to pick up either or both the Stihl and Husqvarna lines, but those companies had established dealers in the area. In the meantime, Diamond Power had established a business relationship with long-time Husqvarna dealer Hunt’s Saw Shop as a source for parts and occasional service referrals. A couple years later, when partners Gary Hunt and Syl Barrett looked to retire, they approached Lane in 2007 and came up with a neat agreement that kept Hunt involved with chain saw service—and made Diamond Power the go-to dealership in the area for pro saw service.
Diamond Power acquired much of the dealership’s inventory, set Hunt up in a special area at the new location—complete with woodburning stove and stuffed chair “waiting room area” just like the saw shops of old—and allowed him to continue his work there as an independent contractor and a big draw for professional saw customers. Though the arrangement lasted barely a year after Hunt moved away from the area, it worked long enough for much of the closed dealership’s customer base to make the transition to a new location.
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New Site
Though located along the heavily traveled I-5 interstate corridor, the Roseburg area is a relatively small but growing market, with fewer people than the heavily-populated Willamette Valley to the north or Rogue River communities of Grants Pass and Medford to the south.
Soon after Lane bought it, Diamond Power moved from the east end of town to a light industrial area along a busy interstate service road in growing north Roseburg.
“This is really a residential market area,” says Lane, adding that the market doesn’t have the volume of subdivisions or institutional and retail landscaping to support a very large pro lawn service/ landscaping industry. “We sell a lot of high-end mowers to homeowners.”
Diamond Power recently added the Grasshopper line, and “We’ve done real well with them,” Lane says, including sales to customers on the Coast and even east of the Cascade Mountains.
Despite the recent economic slump and greatly reduced housing and lumber markets, the region has a large forest products industry that requires a lot of timber that must be felled manually in remote areas. This, combined with a significant amount of homeowners using wood-fired heating in the area, lends itself to plenty of pro saw work.
“We have some of the best cutters in the world working in this area, with lots of different tree species and sizes on steep slopes and deep canyons,” Lane says. “What we’ve done is cater to our logging customers.”
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Management
Diamond Power employs two full-time technicians. The hourly labor rate is $75 and represents a big shift from when Lane purchased the dealership and it was emphasizing service and one of the lowest labor rates in town. The new rate places Diamond Power among the highest in the local market.
Lane notes that technicians are currently being paid by the hour, but he’s looking to develop an incentive-based pay plan for the service department.
The dealership operates with an Ideal computerized business management system (BMS) and uses PartSmart parts lookup. Lane says when he bought the business it was running a custom BMS that was designed and bought locally, but it didn’t fully meet the needs of a lawn and garden retail business.
“Within two months of buying this business, I switched over to an Ideal system,” Lane says. “One of the biggest things was you couldn’t get any real-time parts information with the old one.”
The new computer systems enabled much more efficient operations. “We were finally able to straighten out the parts inventory,” Lane says. “We had lots of obsolescence.”
Operations
Lane says he’s still in the process of consolidating product lines, but he considers the dealership having three main lines: Husqvarna, Echo and Grasshopper. Other lines include Ariens, Briggs & Stratton engines and power products, Kawasaki, Kohler engines and Tecumseh engines and Honda engines and generators.
 “We stock the full Husqvarna line and think we’ve got some great products there,” Lane says. “We use Husqvarna as our drawing card, but once we get the customers in the door we let them find the product they need that works best for them.”
The dealership also carries a variety of accessories and pro-quality work gear, including Oregon OEP accessories, attachments and hand tools, Viking and Justin work clothes, Muck work boots and American, Bald Eagle and Atlas work gloves.
Though many dealers are pursuing service approaches that handle only in-house or select product lines, Lane maintains a wide open service department that will work on anything he can get parts for. Such an outlook enables him to talk to more customers and gives the dealership more opportunities to develop long-term relationships.
“My philosophy is we’re in the service business,” Lane says. “We’re in this to do right by people and build a reputation. If I sold it to you, of course we’ll service it. But if it’s a Ryobi bought at Home Depot? You don’t turn those people away either.”
Instead, Lane continues, “We try to give those people an education, tell them about premium product features and benefits and do our best to get them in the right product at the right time.”
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