HEADLINES
Blue Bird, Girardin Join Forces on Micro Bird Type A
Te new partnership be-
tween Blue Bird and Girardin to produce and market the Type A Micro Bird school bus was apparent not only during the course of an interview with Roger Howsmon and Steve Gi- rardin on Nov. 3 in Louisville, Ky., but also later that day on the NAPT trade show floor, where the two companies shared booth space. “Tere’s no fusion; this is a
joint venture partnership. We feel it is going to have very positive ramifications for us as a company, Blue Bird, and its dealers and the customers.
Te Girardin brand is sched- uled to phase out within the next 12 months in favor of the Blue Bird Micro Bird by Girar- din brand,” said Girardin, the company’s president, adding that Girardin’s other models will be renamed the Micro Bird MB-II and Micro Bird G5. According to Howsmon,
Blue Bird’s chief marketing of- ficer and senior vice president of sales, the OEM saw a need to improve on its Type A prod- uct. Te choice, whether to invest substantial resources and company talent toward a complete product overhaul
or to seek a partnership with one of its long-time Canadian school bus dealers, was made in October. “When we analyzed the
potential return on invest- ment, it made a lot of sense for both companies to join hands and take the synergies that both companies have to the customer level,” added Howsmon. After closing its Micro Bird
plant in Brantford, Ontario, in August 2007 and moving Type A production to its Fort Valley, Ga., facility, the syner- gies Blue Bird had expected
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to evolve from the move did not materialize. According to Howsmon, the complexity of the Fort Valley plant did not lend itself to manufacturing a sufficient volume to sup- port the investment required to take the small bus to the next level. “By merging the two to-
gether, we’ll be able to exploit different strategies and syn- ergies for product
technolo-
gies to ensure the customers the quality and dependability they’ve come to expect from Blue Bird and Girardin over the years,” said Girardin. n
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