I have to admit that in nearly 20 years of covering the business and as a business owner myself, there’s a heaping helping of skepticism on the subject of the viability of the company store.

With the CDK-e-Emphasys merger in May further reducing the independent software choices for dealers, our “deep dive” into software for our next edition is most timely. 

This “naked pursuit of scale” and quest for market share sounds familiar. Farm machinery manufacturers and their dealers have dealt with this push-pull reality for decades (at least since I started covering the industry in 2004).

This blog was posted in response to Frank Lessiter’s article, “133 Right-to-Repair Concerns -- Growers Get Loud,” that was a follow-up to a unique content project between Lessiter Media’s farm equipment and grower divisions. To view the original work, click here to review the arguments for dealers/manufacturers (Executive Editor Kim Schmidt) and growers (Grower Division Editorial Chairman Frank Lessiter).

As the NCAA’s wrap up and baseball’s opening days take place this week, we went to farm equipment leaders about the lessons learned from their sport-playing “glory days.”