The outdoor power equipment industry has been doing quite well of late, thanks in no small part to booming home sales, according to the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI), the industry's international trade association.
Low interest rates have also played a role, leaving many consumers who have refinanced their mortgages or taken out home equity loans awash in spendable cash.
That's all good news to entrepreneurs such as Marc Croft, founder and owner of Croft Power Equipment LLC in Woods Cross, Utah-but not quite as good one might expect.
Sure, sales of walk-behind mowers, riding mowers, lawn tractors and other outdoor power equipment were up this year, and additional gains are forecast for 2005, according to OPEI. However, the greatest beneficiaries of those gains have been big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores and Home Depot, not small businesses like Croft Power Equipment.
For just about anyone involved in the business of selling products and/or services to the general public these days, competition from big-box chains is a brutal fact of life. "It's the 800-pound gorilla sitting smack-dab in the middle of the small business owner's showroom," is how one veteran retail analyst puts it. "You couldn't ignore it even if you wanted to."
Certainly, it's a challenge that Croft faces on a daily basis. "A small business like ours does not have nearly the amount of money the large chains have available to throw at a new concept," he says.
"In order to compete in that environment, we have to be creative enough to come up with ideas that the big-box stores can't duplicate. That's what keeps customers coming back to us."
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