December 19 -- David Withers, the newly minted president of Jacobsen, intends to focus on three things: customers, customers, customers.
We caught up with the man who now leads the Orange team in golf’s Big 3 as he was entering his fourth month in the job and beginning to implement some of the changes he believes will restore the manufacturer’s reputation and market share to its previous highs.
You came up from the technical side. Do you find yourself still poking around engines?
It’s too true! I have to stop myself from designing during product meetings. I love working with machines. That’s been a labor of love for me so I’ve had to spend far more time learning the business side.”
What’s priority one for you at the helm?
A lot of the issues that had hurt us were already fixed, particularly the parts and service problems. The challenge now is that we’re simply not externally focused enough. We need to be more involved and focused on the customers. You grow credibility by being out there and being involved. You have to be visible so we’re doing a lot more customer interaction. We’re going to put more feet on the street, so to speak. We’ve freed up money to hire more ‘forward-facing’ people and we’ve just named a new vice president of customer care, Tony Brown who’d been with Kioti tractors, who will be 100-percent focused on that.
What’s standing in the way of your business goals for Jacobsen?
Time, mainly. We can do it. It’s just a matter of how quickly. Unfortunately, we’re still suffering from the perception that our parts, service and backup isn’t as good as others. If anything, we’ve gone over the top on the inventory we carry and, as I said, fixed the reality. But to change the perceptions, we need to build relationships and confidence to the point where superintendents will say, ‘I’ll switch.’ We have to build relationships first at our level – the corporate level. We may have relied too heavily on dealers for that in the past. They look after existing customers well. We need to do a better job to help them bring new ones in.
What’s your take on the “new normal” in the U.S. golf market and how it impacts companies like Jacobsen?
There has been a structural shift in buying habits. We used to be able to count on equipment churning every five years. In today’s market, they just don’t churn as fast so it’s six or seven years. My guess is that (the market) will settle but with a longer replacement cycle. But, given our position, we can still grow. It’s actually advantageous to have lower market share in a shrinking market to achieve growth. The bottom line for us is to focus on the ‘three Bs”: Build good relations, Build a good machine and Back it up. It’s just a matter of execution from there.
How do you segment the market and where to focus your sales efforts?
My belief is that the market is splitting. You cannot serve it with one product per category. The high end is very interested in quality and new technologies. There, for example, we offer the Eclipse 322 with a higher sticker but noticeable, measurable and provable improvement in quality of cut. But, we also have value offerings for courses out there that are doing the very best they can with limited budgets. Those guys still need machinery that’s within their reach. Our portfolio moving forward will reflect the fact that we have to lead in both premium and value product lines.
What are you hearing from dealers?
I’ve met quite a few of them but not all of them quite yet. The ones I’ve met are very supportive of us being more active, more aggressive and more focused on building new customer relationships. I also know from them that I’m very lucky that I’ve come into this at a time when Dan (Wilkinson) had fixed a lot of the issues that troubled them.
So what can the golf market expect from David Withers at the helm of Jacobsen?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I will stick to the Three Bs. I try to keep the business simple so everything flows from that. Golf is a relationship industry. We’ve done the hard work on the product, parts and service side…now it’s a matter for us to be visible, meet more of our customers and build relationships with them. They want Jacobsen to succeed because they like our products and they want a valid choice. We will be out there every day in front of customers to give them that choice.
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