May 14, 2007 – Cycle Country Accessories sees benefit from its new product focus
Cycle Country Accessories Corp. CEO Randy Kempf is already seeing dividends from the company’s recent decision to ramp up its new product offerings.
One of those new products led to Cycle Country increasing its business with retail giant Cabela’s. The national retailer is adding a UTV product that Cycle Country sells through its Weekend Warrior label, a brand that is mostly different from the product line sold through powersports distributors and dealers.
“Quite frankly, we hadn’t pushed that relationship (with Cabela’s) or worked it adequately in the past and we’re working it harder now,” Kempf said.
The UTV Safari Rack is not the first Weekend Warrior item that Cabela’s carries, but it’s the first new Cycle Country product that has been added to the retail chain’s catalog and Web site for quite some time, Kempf said.
Cabela’s officials saw the UTV rack at the 2007 Dealer Expo, where Cycle Country showed off a number of new products.
“Cycle Country had not done a good job in the past of developing new products and that is much more of our focus now,” Kempf said. “In fact, we have more than 125 new products in development right now, and we have additional engineering people to get those new products to market now. So we’re going to basically become a new product machine.”
Kempf believes both the powersports industry, which stocks the higher-end Cycle Country product line, and stores like Cabela’s or small-box retailers like Tractor Supply that carry the Weekend Warrior line can benefit from the new products.
The two product line channels often offer the same basic product, but the higher-end Cycle Country brand has different features and a different price point. For example, the company’s 44-inch mower has two wheels for the Weekend Warrior brand and four wheels, which leads to a better cut, and other features for the Cycle Country brand. Plus, Kempf says, most Weekend Warrior items come in a gray matte finish while most Cycle Country products will have a black matte finish and in the case of snow plows, Teflon finishing so the snow won’t stick to the blade.
Besides adding another product to the Cabela’s catalog and online store, Cycle Country also is seeking to enhance its Weekend Warrior business through other mass market retailers, Kempf said.
“One of the things we’ve discovered is for whatever reason the ATV dealer, by and large, has walked away from a huge sales opportunity by not offering accessories for ATVs,” Kempf said. “They’ll agree to take a snow blade and occasionally one of them will buy” a mower, but there’s other accessory lines that dealers have largely stayed away from.
“There’s some huge margins in there for the dealers if they choose to do it,” Kempf said. “Obviously we’re not willing to give that market away to our competitors so that’s why the Weekend Warrior product goes out to sell against our competition, not our dealers.” psb