COMPANY PROFILE
Tom Scanlon, Golf & Turf’s Joint Managing Director
to 70hp agricultural tractors that were the main choice for cutting grass in parks and open spaces” “Beaver was the first serious competitor to these machines, and a lot of the dealers we were approaching were Iseki dealers, so they knew who we were, and wanted something to sell against Ransomes, so it wasn’t so much a case of finding it hard getting dealers on board, it was more a case of fighting against a very well established market leader.” “Nevertheless, we ended up signing about thirty good dealers across the UK, compared with Ransomes who had about forty-eight established dealers at that time, so I would say we were very successful.”
So successful in fact that Hayter bought the rights to the Beaver range in 1986, while the new dealer network was still being established, effectively becoming the group of three’s employer.
This only lasted for about a year though, because John Deere had itself arrived on the groundcare scene in 1986. “We made the initial approach this time, and suggested that we could start a new John Deere groundcare dealership from scratch in the south of England,” says Tom Scanlon. “John Deere was new to the market, and had opted to try and sell the few machines it had through its existing agricultural dealers, which wasn’t really working. We set out to convince them that we could do a better job, and we did!”
In its first year as a John Deere dealer, Golf & Turf sold the F935 front rotary mower, a couple of domestic mowers and the 55 Series compact tractors, which were available with mid-mounted mower decks and front loaders.
“It was a similar situation to Lely and the Beaver mower,” says Tom Scanlon. “The John Deere machines, particularly
the compact tractors, had a lot of potential, but this was not being fully capitalised on, particularly in the growing groundcare market.” “Kubota and Iseki were the two main compact tractor brands in those days, but small tractors like these were looked on almost as toys in agriculture. The manufacturers weren’t really seeing the big picture with regard to local councils and authorities with large areas of grass to cut - which was exactly who we started selling to. The John Deere range, at that particular time, didn’t lend itself to golf course maintenance - that was still to come.”
It wasn’t long before the first wrap-
around triple gang mower, with an 84in cut, designed for use with compact tractors, became available. Ironically, this was made by Hayter, and employed Beaver cutting heads. It was developed to fit Iseki models originally, but ended
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