During a special panel discussion at the Dealership Minds Summit, we brought in John Schmeiser, retired dealer association exec, and COO of TI Technology Corp; Eric Wareham, vice president of policy with AED and Brett Davis, CEO of NAEDA, to help break down the impact the FTC/Deere agreement will have on dealers of all colors.
At the end of the day, Davis says the agreement isn’t a major change and that Deere — and the industry as a whole — was already moving in this direction.
"Not even just Deere. I think the industry was moving in the general direction. I mean, I go back and if you do a quick comparison between the famous MOUs with the OEMs from the Farm Bureau, which is the Federal Farm Bureau, there's not that much different in the settlement from the MOU if you read the language in the context. So it's nothing all that earth shattering. And the one thing that is completely absent, there is no mention of the Farm Bureau in the settlement at all and no commitment. So we're still going to see the states have causes of actions. That's still going to continue because that's not prohibited by the settlement whatsoever. But honestly, I don't think it really going to change that much. When I look at a dealer's profile, could they lose a little bit of service here and there? Sure. But they may also have an opportunity to make it up on additional parts sales too and some of the tool sales."
"So it could be a balance. I don't think it's earth shattering. I think it looked big in the paper, but at the end of the day, it's kind of like John alluded to, I'm not sure it really changes the landscape materially."
While the industry was moving this way with the MOUs various OEMs had agreed to, Wareham says this adds an enforcement mechanism.
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