Shortline manufacturer Art’s Way Mfg. has decided to forgo large national farm shows and instead is expanding its presence at smaller shows. In addition, the manufacturer hosted its first annual Dealer Day on March 11-12. “With hundreds of dealers around the United States and even across the world, we limited our invitation to the dealers who account for about half of our business generated from selling wholegoods,” the company says.

During the event, Art’s Way introduced four new products: 8215 Grinder Mixer, 7240 Forage Box, X Series Manure Spreaders and The Hammer Blower. Engineers for the four new pieces of equipment each gave a presentation to educate dealers about Art’s Way’s new product lines. Along with the engineers speaking, a dealer who specialized in each product spoke about it as well.

During the Dealer Day evetn, Art’s also introduced:

New Dealer Portal: To meet the needs of dealers and their customers, Art’s Way created a new online dealer portal system. This new portal allows dealers to search through inventory, check manuals, obtain pricing, and place orders online. “The movement to having all resources readily available online lead us to developing this system for the convenience of our dealers. This new online system also allows for the dealers to check on the status of their order so they can keep track of their customer’s items. Along with the new online ordering system, we have updated our warranty registration and process,” the company says. Registration and claims can both be filed online as well as tracking a claim once it has been placed.

Internal Investments: “With the importance of being completely digital at an all-time high, we recently invested about $250,000 into improving the IT department in our facility,” the company says. Customers now have the option to sign up for automatic invoicing, receive bi-monthly account balance updates, and any open invoices will be available to view.

Advertising: “To keep up with the competition, we highly recommend that our dealers create advertisements and run them so customers can learn about what products we have to offer. Co-Op Advertising is a program that we stress dealers use as a resource for these advertisements. Dealers advertising budgets vary as it bases off one percent of their whole goods sales from the previous year. We have two different employees who work on advertisements that are available for the dealers’ utilization whenever they need it.”

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